(automake-1.16.info)Suffixes

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18.2 Handling new file extensions
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It is sometimes useful to introduce a new implicit rule to handle a file
type that Automake does not know about.

   For instance, suppose you had a compiler that could compile ‘.foo’
files to ‘.o’ files.  You would simply define a suffix rule for your
language:

     .foo.o:
             foocc -c -o $@ $<

   Then you could directly use a ‘.foo’ file in a ‘_SOURCES’ variable
and expect the correct results:

     bin_PROGRAMS = doit
     doit_SOURCES = doit.foo

   This was the simpler and more common case.  In other cases, you will
have to help Automake to figure out which extensions you are defining
your suffix rule for.  This usually happens when your extension does not
start with a dot.  Then, all you have to do is to put a list of new
suffixes in the ‘SUFFIXES’ variable *before* you define your implicit
rule.

   For instance, the following definition prevents Automake from
misinterpreting the ‘.idlC.cpp:’ rule as an attempt to transform ‘.idlC’
files into ‘.cpp’ files.

     SUFFIXES = .idl C.cpp
     .idlC.cpp:
             # whatever

   As you may have noted, the ‘SUFFIXES’ variable behaves like the
‘.SUFFIXES’ special target of ‘make’.  You should not touch ‘.SUFFIXES’
yourself, but use ‘SUFFIXES’ instead and let Automake generate the
suffix list for ‘.SUFFIXES’.  Any given ‘SUFFIXES’ go at the start of
the generated suffixes list, followed by Automake generated suffixes not
already in the list.