Automake is a tool for automatically generating `makefile.in's from files called `makefile.am'.

the goal of automake is to remove the burden of makefile maintenance from the back of the individual gnu maintainer (and put it on the back of the automake maintainer).

the `makefile.am' is basically a series of `make' macro definitions (with rules being thrown in occasionally). the generated `makefile.in's are compliant with the gnu makefile standards.

automake 1.10 fails to work in a number of situations that automake 1.4, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8 and 1.9 did, so has been renamed so that the previous version can continue to be made available.