How to convert Makefile.am to Makefile.in?

I'm trying to install gnuplot 5.3 from github. I'm running

aclocal
autoheader
autoconf
automake

inside the package location.

This gives an error because automake is looking for Makefile.in and I have a bunch of Makefile.am files, supposedly automake should change the .am files to .in but that clearly doesn't happen. Can't run ./configure after becuase of the same reason, how do I get the .am files to change to .in?

1 Answer

At first please note that GNU Plot is packaged in all Ubuntu versions:

But you can compile GNU Plot from GitHub by using the followed procedure:

1. Enable Source code repositories in Software & Updates (software-properties-gtk) and install compile-time dependencies to be completely sure that all dependencies are satisfied on compile time

   sudo apt-get build-dep gnuplot

2. Install needed tools

   sudo apt-get install git lua5.1

3. Clone repository and run ./prepare script first (!!! important step !!!)

   git clone
   cd gnuplot
   ./prepare

4. Then run all usual tools:

   ./configure
   make
   #make check # shows various very beautiful plots
   sudo make install

   Note: it is better to use Checkinstall (sudo make checkinstall install) in last step, decide by yourself.