These factors led to the development of Automake. automake, like autoconf, is a program run by a developer. The developer writes files named Makefile.am; these use a simpler syntax than ordinary Makefiles. automake reads the Makefile.am files and produces Makefile.in files. The idea is that a script generated by autoconf converts these Makefile.in files into Makefiles.

… which are then read by make to run the compiler.

Seriously, if a build process needs 5 different programms in 3 different languages that, in part, generate each other, change the god damn build process to something simpler. So I don’t have to deal with this crap in 2008.

(from http://sources.redhat.com/autobook/autobook/autobook_10.html#SEC10)