The build system uses autoconf 2.57 and automake
1.7. You should modify only the Makefile.am files, which
generate the Makefile.in files (and
the configure script produced by autoconf will generate the
Makefiles from those). If you don't have automake (or not a
new enough version), the build system will warn you and continue without
regenerating Makefile.in.
The version number is set in the line
AC_INIT(BOINC, 1.03)
in configure.ac. (If you change this, run make
and it rebuild necessary files to propagate the version number into
source files and scripts.)
The top-level Makefile.am contains the
SUBDIRS= line which sets up directory recursion, and the
rules for creating source distributions.
To make distributions:
make dist
make dist-client
... will make the full and client distributions respectively. (The client distribution contains everything necessary to compile the client; the full distribution contains everything necessary to compile the server and client.)
Each will make .tar.gz, .tar.bz2,
and .zip files. You can also make only the individual ones
using the make
targets dist-bzip2, dist-gzip, dist-zip.