Yes, it is. automake will generate makefiles that track dependencies as a side-effect of compilation ( http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/automake.html

Yes, it is. automake will generate makefiles that track dependencies as a side-effect of compilation ( http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/automake.html#Dependency-Tracking http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/automake.html#De... ). What this means is that whenever a source file is compiled it will update the dependencies for the .o file. It has to be done then because different platforms could have different header dependencies (if you're having fun with #define).