I have a software package that includes another package in a subdirectory:
package_a/ ... package_a/package_b/ ... In order to build a standalone version of package_b, I'm running the following commands to make sure that no auto* generated files reference the parent dir: cd package_a/package_b/ aclocal automake autoconf ./configure make dist So far so good. However, I notice that after make dist, the files install-sh missing mkinstalldirs have been copied from the parent directory: Makefile.in: DIST_COMMON = ... ../install-sh ../missing ../mkinstalldirs Question: how does automake know that these files are in the parent directory? Does it always check the parent directory for such files? Not that I'm complaining about this, just want to know what's going on :)
