automake-1.16: aclocal Options
6.3.1 aclocal Options
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‘aclocal’ accepts the following options:
‘--automake-acdir=DIR’
Look for the automake-provided macro files in DIR instead of in the
installation directory. This is typically used for debugging.
The environment variable ‘ACLOCAL_AUTOMAKE_DIR’ provides another
way to set the directory containing automake-provided macro files.
However ‘--automake-acdir’ takes precedence over it.
‘--system-acdir=DIR’
Look for the system-wide third-party macro files (and the special
‘dirlist’ file) in DIR instead of in the installation directory.
This is typically used for debugging.
‘--diff[=COMMAND]’
Run COMMAND on the M4 file that would be installed or overwritten
by ‘--install’. The default COMMAND is ‘diff -u’. This option
implies ‘--install’ and ‘--dry-run’.
‘--dry-run’
Do not overwrite (or create) ‘aclocal.m4’ and M4 files installed by
‘--install’.
‘--help’
Print a summary of the command line options and exit.
‘-I DIR’
Add the directory DIR to the list of directories searched for ‘.m4’
files.
‘--install’
Install system-wide third-party macros into the first directory
specified with ‘-I DIR’ instead of copying them in the output file.
Note that this will happen also if DIR is an absolute path.
When this option is used, and only when this option is used,
‘aclocal’ will also honor ‘#serial NUMBER’ lines that appear in
macros: an M4 file is ignored if there exists another M4 file with
the same basename and a greater serial number in the search path
(⇒Serials).
‘--force’
Always overwrite the output file. The default is to overwrite the
output file only when needed, i.e., when its contents change or if
one of its dependencies is younger.
This option forces the update of ‘aclocal.m4’ (or the file
specified with ‘--output’ below) and only this file, it has
absolutely no influence on files that may need to be installed by
‘--install’.
‘--output=FILE’
Cause the output to be put into FILE instead of ‘aclocal.m4’.
‘--print-ac-dir’
Prints the name of the directory that ‘aclocal’ will search to find
third-party ‘.m4’ files. When this option is given, normal
processing is suppressed. This option was used _in the past_ by
third-party packages to determine where to install ‘.m4’ macro
files, but _this usage is today discouraged_, since it causes
‘$(prefix)’ not to be thoroughly honored (which violates the GNU
Coding Standards), and similar semantics can be better obtained
with the ‘ACLOCAL_PATH’ environment variable; ⇒Extending
aclocal.
‘--verbose’
Print the names of the files it examines.
‘--version’
Print the version number of Automake and exit.
‘-W CATEGORY’
‘--warnings=CATEGORY’
Output warnings falling in CATEGORY. CATEGORY can be one of:
‘syntax’
dubious syntactic constructs, underquoted macros, unused
macros, etc.
‘unsupported’
unknown macros
‘all’
all the warnings, this is the default
‘none’
turn off all the warnings
‘error’
treat warnings as errors
All warnings are output by default.
The environment variable ‘WARNINGS’ is honored in the same way as
it is for ‘automake’ (⇒automake Invocation).