6.4.5 The Types of Distributions

Automake generates rules to provide archives of the project for distributions in various formats. Their targets are:

dist-gzip

Generate a ‘gzip’ tar archive of the distribution. This is the only format enabled by default.

dist-bzip2

Generate a ‘bzip2’ tar archive of the distribution. bzip2 archives are frequently smaller than gzipped archives. By default, this rule makes ‘bzip2’ use a compression option of -9. To make it use a different one, set the BZIP2 environment variable. For example, ‘make dist-bzip2 BZIP2=-7’.

dist-lzip

Generate an ‘lzip’ tar archive of the distribution. lzip archives are frequently smaller than bzip2-compressed archives.

dist-xz

Generate an ‘xz’ tar archive of the distribution. xz archives are frequently smaller than bzip2-compressed archives. By default, this rule makes ‘xz’ use a compression option of -e. To make it use a different one, set the XZ_OPT environment variable. For example, run this command to use the default compression ratio, but with a progress indicator: ‘make dist-xz XZ_OPT=-ve’.

dist-zip

Generate a ‘zip’ archive of the distribution.

The rule dist (and its historical synonym dist-all) will create archives in all the enabled formats (see List of Automake options for how to change this list). By default, only the dist-gzip target is hooked to dist.