I got a C project to compile and run in Linux. It is a very big project with many subdirectories. Inside the parent directory there are files Makefile.am and Makefile.in.
I tried running make -f Makefile.am, and got the following error:
make: Nothing to be done for `Makefile.am'.
What does it mean? How do I accomplish my task?
What has been left out:
Neither of these (Makefile.{am,in}) are supposed to be used with make -f.
If the tarball already ships with configure, just run that and make. If it does not, run ./autogen.sh or bootstrap(*). If that does not exist, use autoreconf instead.
(*) autogen/bootstrap: A convenience script added by developers that should just call autoreconf. Unfortunately there are some people that eschew autoreconf and unnecessarily call all the lowlevel commands themselves.