If ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/dejagnu-1.3.tar.gzdejagnu appears in AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS, then a dejagnu-based test suite is assumed. The variable DEJATOOL is a list of names which are passed, one at a time, as the -tool argument to runtest invocations; it defaults to the name of the package.
The variable RUNTESTDEFAULTFLAGS holds the -tool and -srcdir flags that are passed to dejagnu by default; this can be overridden if necessary. The variables EXPECT and RUNTEST can also be overridden to provide project-specific values. For instance, you will need to do this if you are testing a compiler toolchain, because the default values do not take into account host and target names. The contents of the variable RUNTESTFLAGS are passed to the runtest invocation. This is considered a "user variable" (the section called “Variables reserved for the user”). If you need to set runtest flags in Makefile.am, you can use AM_RUNTESTFLAGS instead. In either case, the testing is done via make check.