Generating binary releases

[David Richard Larochelle]

Hi all,

I use autoconf for a software package.  make dist is great for creating a 
source tar ball.  But we would also like to release precompiled binaries.  The 
package contains a lot of support files so we would like a to be able to use 
the make install feature the copy the files.

I've tried making a source tar ball and compiling it and then compressing 
that.  However, make install insists on recompiling the entire package if the 
user runs configure.

I'm thinking of hand writing alternative makefiles to include with the binary 
release but I'm looking for a cleaner solution.

Any suggestions.

I've searched the web and autoconf documentation for the answer to this 
question.  I apologize if I overlooked something obvious.