(automake-1.16.info)Gnits

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22 The effect of ‘--gnu’ and ‘--gnits’
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The ‘--gnu’ option (or ‘gnu’ in the ‘AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS’ variable) causes
‘automake’ to check the following:

   • The files ‘INSTALL’, ‘NEWS’, ‘README’, ‘AUTHORS’, and ‘ChangeLog’,
     plus one of ‘COPYING.LIB’, ‘COPYING.LESSER’ or ‘COPYING’, are
     required at the topmost directory of the package.

     If the ‘--add-missing’ option is given, ‘automake’ will add a
     generic version of the ‘INSTALL’ file as well as the ‘COPYING’ file
     containing the text of the current version of the GNU General
     Public License existing at the time of this Automake release
     (version 3 as this is written,
     <https://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html>).  However, an existing
     ‘COPYING’ file will never be overwritten by ‘automake’.

   • The options ‘no-installman’ and ‘no-installinfo’ are prohibited.

   Note that this option will be extended in the future to do even more
checking; it is advisable to be familiar with the precise requirements
of the GNU standards.  Also, ‘--gnu’ can require certain non-standard
GNU programs to exist for use by various maintainer-only rules; for
instance, in the future ‘pathchk’ might be required for ‘make dist’.

   The ‘--gnits’ option does everything that ‘--gnu’ does, and checks
the following as well:

   • ‘make installcheck’ will check to make sure that the ‘--help’ and
     ‘--version’ really print a usage message and a version string,
     respectively.  This is the ‘std-options’ option (Note: Options).

   • ‘make dist’ will check to make sure the ‘NEWS’ file has been
     updated to the current version.

   • ‘VERSION’ is checked to make sure its format complies with Gnits
     standards.

   • If ‘VERSION’ indicates that this is an alpha release, and the file
     ‘README-alpha’ appears in the topmost directory of a package, then
     it is included in the distribution.  This is done in ‘--gnits’
     mode, and no other, because this mode is the only one where version
     number formats are constrained, and hence the only mode where
     Automake can automatically determine whether ‘README-alpha’ should
     be included.

   • The file ‘THANKS’ is required.