This is not the automake you are looking for. Automake is a tool for automatically generating Makefile.in files compliant with the GNU Coding Standards. Automake requires the use of Autoconf. This msys port of automake has been modified specifically for the MSYS System Builder (msys-dvlpr) environment; that is, it is intended to be used only when producing binary packages for the MSYS subsystem. If you intend to produce executables for the native "mingw32" subsystem (that is, applications that should work on Microsoft Windows installations without the MSYS dll), then you should install the mingw32-automake-*, and/or the mingw32-automake1.NN-* packages instead.