15.3 The dist hook

Another way to to use this is for removing unnecessary files that get recursively included by specifying a directory in EXTRA_DIST:

EXTRA_DIST = doc dist-hook: rm -rf `find $(distdir)/doc -name CVS`

If you define SUBDIRS, Automake will recursively include the subdirectories in the distribution. If SUBDIRS is defined conditionally (see section 20. Conditionals), Automake will normally include all directories that could possibly appear in SUBDIRS in the distribution. If you need to specify the set of directories conditionally, you can set the variable DIST_SUBDIRS to the exact list of subdirectories to include in the distribution.

Occasionally it is useful to be able to change the distribution before it is packaged up. If the dist-hook target exists, it is run after the distribution directory is filled, but before the actual tar (or shar) file is created. One way to use this is for distributing files in subdirectories for which a new `Makefile.am' is overkill:

dist-hook: mkdir $(distdir)/random cp -p $(srcdir)/random/a1 $(srcdir)/random/a2 $(distdir)/random