Looking for explanation of build files

[Beth <beth.tridium () gmail com>]

They always say, the best way to discover how little you understand
something is to try to explain it to someone else!

I'm trying to write up site-specific instructions for my colleagues on how
to write a Wireshark plugin, and I realize I
don't know which of the build files in a plugin source folder are necessary
vs. which ones are auto-generated or irrelevant.
The build complains if certain files are missing, e.g. Makefile.nmake or
plugin.rc.in, but it doesn't make a peep if I omit
Makefile.am or Makefile.in (or AUTHORS for that matter).

Since I got my own start writing plugins by copying some existing plugin's
folder and changing the module name everywhere I
could find it, I really have no understanding of what I did, other than it
eventually compiled and worked.  E.g. I used to create a
Custom.nmake file for my plugin, as described in Custom.nmake.example, but
recently I didn't and everything built fine anyway.

Is there a description somewhere of what each of the files are for?  I've
been poking around in the various docs, both the ones
included with the Wireshark source and the ones based at
http://wiki.wireshark.org/Development, and so far no luck.  Plenty
of discussion on how to write your plugin's source code, but nothing on the
build files.

Thanks!

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