Use autotools with README.md

Question

I'm using autotools for a libraries hosted on GitHub. Instead of using an ordinary README text file, I want to use README.md.

When running automake, I get the following error

Makefile.am: required file `./README' not found 

Is it possible to tell autotools not to check for README?

Answer 1

Just pass the foreign option to automake. This tells it that your software does not conform to the typical gnu standards, and thus omitting README is not an error. Typically, this is done in configure.ac:

AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE([foreign]) 

but it can also be done by assigning AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS in Makefile.am:

AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS = foreign