How to prevent automake from overwriting INSTALL?

I'm working on a project that has a custom INSTALL file. Running automake --add-missing (or more precisely, autoreconf -i) will generate the GNU default INSTALL file, and overwrite our file with it. How can I prevent this behavior? I want it to either not generate the GNU INSTALL file at all, or alternatively, create it with a different name. Also, I don't want to disable any other files that automake might generate. --- **Edit 1:** From the [automake manual](https://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/html_node/Gnits.html) : > If the --add-missing option is given, automake will add a generic > version of the INSTALL file as well as the COPYING file containing the > text of the current version of the GNU General Public License [...]. However, an existing COPYING > file will never be overwritten by automake. It says that an existing COPYING file will not be overwritten, but doesn't say anything about the INSTALL file, so it seems like it will be unconditionally overwritten. **Edit 2:** As requested, here are my configure.ac and Makefile.am, and also autogen.sh that we run to autoreconf the project: configure.ac: AC_INIT([program name], [version number], [bug report], [short name], [url]) AC_CONFIG_SRCDIR([Main/Source/main.cpp]) AM_PROG_AS AC_CANONICAL_TARGET AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE AC_PROG_CC AC_PROG_CXX CFLAGS="$CFLAGS $SDL_CFLAGS " LIBS="$LIBS $SDL_LIBS" CPPFLAGS="$SDL_CFLAGS -DLINUX -DLOCAL_STATE_DIR=\\\"$sharedstatedir/\\\" -DDATADIR=\\\"$datadir\\\" -DUSE_SDL -DGCC" AC_PROG_INSTALL AC_PROG_RANLIB AC_CONFIG_FILES() AC_OUTPUT Makefile.am: SUBDIRS = FooLib Main Bar Baz EXTRA_DIST = LICENSING autogen.sh: autoreconf -f -i