Automake scans the package's configure.in to determine certain information about the package. Some autoconf macros are required and some variables must be defined in configure.in. Automake will also use information from configure.in to further tailor its output.
Automake also supplies some Autoconf macros to make the maintenance easier. These macros can automatically be put into your aclocal.m4 using the aclocal program.
The one real requirement of Automake is that your configure.in call AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE. This macro does several things which are required for proper Automake operation. Here are the other macros which Automake requires but which are not run by AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE:
You may need the following macros in some conditions, even though they are not required.
Installed binaries are usually stripped using strip when you run make install-strip. However strip might not be the right tool to use in cross-compilation environments, therefore Automake will honor the STRIP environment variable to overrule the program used to perform stripping. Automake will not set STRIP itself. If your package is not setup for cross-compilation you do not have to care (strip is ok), otherwise you can set STRIP automatically by calling AC_CHECK_TOOL([STRIP],[strip]) from your configure.in.