Every Autoconf script, e.g., configure.ac, should finish by calling AC_OUTPUT. It is the macro that generates config.status, which will create the Makefiles and any other files resulting from configuration. The only required macro is AC_INIT (the section called “Finding configureInput”).
function>AC_OUTPUT/function> Generate config.status and launch it. Call this macro once, at the end of configure.ac.
config.status will take all the configuration actions: all the output files (see the section called “Creating Configuration Files ”, macro AC_CONFIG_FILES), header files (see the section called “Configuration Header Files ”, macro AC_CONFIG_HEADERS), commands (see the section called “Running Arbitrary Configuration Commands”, macro AC_CONFIG_COMMANDS), links (see the section called “Creating Configuration Links”, macro AC_CONFIG_LINKS), subdirectories to configure (see the section called “Configuring Other Packages in Subdirectories”, macro AC_CONFIG_SUBDIRS) are honored.
Historically, the usage of AC_OUTPUT was somewhat different. the section called “Obsolete Macros ”, for a description of the arguments that AC_OUTPUT used to support.
If you run make on subdirectories, you should run it using the make variable MAKE. Most versions of make set MAKE to the name of the make program plus any options it was given. (But many do not include in it the values of any variables set on the command line, so those are not passed on automatically.) Some old versions of make do not set this variable. The following macro allows you to use it even with those versions.
function>AC_PROG_MAKE_SET/function> If make predefines the variable MAKE, define output variable SET_MAKE to be empty. Otherwise, define SET_MAKE to contain MAKE=make. Calls AC_SUBST for SET_MAKE.
To use this macro, place a line like this in each Makefile.in that runs MAKE on other directories:
@SET_MAKE@