Are these inputs to `autoheader`, `autoscan`, `automake` and `make`?

Question

I am comparing

• the flowchart of autoconf and automake from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automake ,
• Figure 1 - File Input/Output Graph in http://www.seul.org/docs/autotut/

Are the following differences between them normal? Which one is correct?

• Which is the input to autoheader and autoscan, configure.ac or configure.in?

• For inputs to automake, are configure.ac and config.h.in its inputs?

• For inputs to make, is config.h its input?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Which is the input to autoheader and autoscan, configure.ac or configure.in?

configure.in is a deprecated name for configure.ac, but are otherwise equal.

For inputs to automake, are configure.ac and config.h.in its inputs?

automake will ignore config.h.in altogether, but it will need configure.ac (or .in) to figure out which options you're requesting.

For inputs to make, is config.h its input?

make will execute the commands defined in Makefile; config.h is an input to some of those commands because it is included by the source files. It might or might not be installed, and so be a direct input to make commands, but it really shouldn't.