5.3.1 Recursing subdirectories

In packages using make recursion, the top level Makefile.am must tell Automake which subdirectories are to be built. This is done via the SUBDIRS variable.

The SUBDIRS variable holds a list of subdirectories in which building of various sorts can occur. The rules for many targets (e.g., all) in the generated Makefile will run commands both locally and in all specified subdirectories. Note that the directories listed in SUBDIRS are not required to contain Makefile.ams; only Makefiles (after configuration). This allows inclusion of libraries from packages that do not use Automake (such as gettext; see also Third-Party Makefiles).

In packages that use subdirectories, the top-level Makefile.am is often very short. For instance, here is the Makefile.am from the GNU Hello distribution:

EXTRA_DIST = BUGS ChangeLog.O README-alpha
SUBDIRS = doc intl po src tests

When Automake invokes make in a subdirectory, it uses the value of the MAKE variable. It passes the value of the variable AM_MAKEFLAGS to the make invocation; this can be set in Makefile.am if there are flags you must always pass to make.

The directories mentioned in SUBDIRS are usually direct children of the current directory, each subdirectory containing its own Makefile.am with a SUBDIRS pointing to deeper subdirectories. Automake can be used to construct packages of arbitrary depth this way.

By default, Automake generates Makefiles that work depth-first in postfix order: the subdirectories are built before the current directory. However, it is possible to change this ordering. You can do this by putting ‘.’ into SUBDIRS. For instance, putting ‘.’ first will cause a prefix ordering of directories.

Using

SUBDIRS = lib src . test

will cause lib/ to be built before src/, then the current directory will be built, finally the test/ directory will be built. It is customary to arrange test directories to be built after everything else since they are meant to test what has been constructed.

In addition to the built-in recursive targets defined by Automake (all, check, etc.), the developer can also define his own recursive targets. That is done by passing the names of such targets as arguments to the m4 macro AM_EXTRA_RECURSIVE_TARGETS in configure.ac. Automake generates rules to handle the recursion for such targets; and the developer can define real actions for them by defining corresponding -local targets.

% cat configure.ac
AC_INIT([pkg-name], [1.0]
AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE
AM_EXTRA_RECURSIVE_TARGETS([foo])
AC_CONFIG_FILES([Makefile sub/Makefile sub/src/Makefile])
AC_OUTPUT
% cat Makefile.am
SUBDIRS = sub
foo-local:
        @echo This will be run by "make foo".
% cat sub/Makefile.am
SUBDIRS = src
% cat sub/src/Makefile.am
foo-local:
        @echo This too will be run by a "make foo" issued either in
        @echo the 'sub/src/' directory, the 'sub/' directory, or the
        @echo top-level directory.