14 Automake options

Various features of Automake can be controlled by options. Most options can be applied on a per-Makefile.am basis when listed in the special AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS variable.

Some of these options only make sense when specified in the top-level Makefile.am, in the case of a project with subdirectories and multiple Makefile.am files.

Options can also be listed in the first argument of AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE in configure.ac, which leads them to be applied globally to all processed Makefile files. (See Macros supplied with Automake.) Some options which require changes to the configure script can only be specified there.

Options specified in AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS take precedence over those specified in AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE, which in turn take precedence over those specified on the command line.