Introduction to Primaries

Each type of object that Automake understands has a special root variable name associated with it. This root is called a primary. Many actual variable names put into Makefile.am are constructed by adding various prefixes to a primary.

For instance, scripts--interpreted executable programs--are associated with the SCRIPTS primary. Here is how you would list scripts to be installed in the user's bindir:

bin_SCRIPTS = magic-script

(Note that the mysterious bin_ prefix will be discussed later.)

The contents of a primary-derived variable are treated as targets in the resulting Makefile. For instance, in our example above, we could generate magic-script using sed by simply introducing it as a target:

bin_SCRIPTS = magic-script magic-script: magic-script.in sed -e 's/whatever//' < $(srcdir)/magic-script.in > magic-script chmod +x magic-script