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21 The effect of --gnu and --gnits

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.
• 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 (see Changing Automake’s Behavior).
• ‘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.