STAR_PREDIST_SOURCES(source-files)
Give a (space-separated) list of files which should exist
only in the pre-distribution (ie, repository checkout)
state. If one of these is
found, then the substitution
variable PREDIST is set to a blank rather
than the comment character #. This means
that Makefile rules which are intended to work only in the
pre-distribution state -- for example to generate
distributed sources -- should appear in
Makefile.am with each line prefixed by
@PREDIST@. After configuration, these rules
will be enabled or disabled depending on the presence or
absence of the marker files listed in this macro.
We should find either all of the marker files or none of them; if some but not all are found, this is probably an error of some type, so warn about it. This means, by the way, that it is the presence or absence of the first marker file which determines whether we are in the pre-distribution or post-distribution state, with the rest providing consistency checks.
The macro may be called more than once. Multiple calls are equivalent to a single call with all the marker files in the list. Automake checks that the files listed here are not in the list of distributed files, and issues a warning if they are.
If you use this @PREDIST@ variable, then it
is important to refer to all the files thus protected in a
STAR_PREDIST_SOURCES call. The build will
possibly still work if you forget to do this, but if so
you are discarding a potentially useful consistency
check.
For examples of use, see Section 4.3