Chapter 22. The effect of -gnu and -gnits

The -gnu option (or gnu in the AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS variable) causes automake to check the following:

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 targets; 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: