| 1 | Autoconf
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| 2 |
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| 3 | Autoconf is an extensible package of m4 macros that produce shell
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| 4 | scripts to automatically configure software source code packages.
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| 5 | These scripts can adapt the packages to many kinds of UNIX-like
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| 6 | systems without manual user intervention. Autoconf creates a
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| 7 | configuration script for a package from a template file that lists the
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| 8 | operating system features that the package can use, in the form of m4
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| 9 | macro calls.
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| 10 |
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| 11 | Producing configuration scripts using Autoconf requires GNU m4. You
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| 12 | must install GNU m4 (version 1.1 or later, preferably 1.3 or later
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| 13 | for better performance) before configuring Autoconf, so that
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| 14 | Autoconf's configure script can find it. The configuration scripts
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| 15 | produced by Autoconf are self-contained, so their users do not need to
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| 16 | have Autoconf (or GNU m4).
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| 17 |
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| 18 | Also, some optional utilities that come with Autoconf use Perl, TCL,
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| 19 | and the TCL packages Expect and DejaGNU. However, none of those
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| 20 | are required in order to use the main Autoconf program. If they are
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| 21 | not present, the affected Autoconf utilities will not be installed.
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| 22 |
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| 23 | The file INSTALL can be distributed with packages that use
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| 24 | Autoconf-generated configure scripts and Makefiles that conform to the
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| 25 | GNU coding standards. The package's README can just give an overview
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| 26 | of the package, where to report bugs, and a pointer to INSTALL for
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| 27 | instructions on compilation and installation. This removes the need
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| 28 | to maintain many similar sets of installation instructions.
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| 29 |
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| 30 | The file `acconfig.h' contains short descriptions of the C preprocessor
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| 31 | variables that Autoconf can define, suitable for copying into other
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| 32 | packages' configuration headers or Makefile.in files. You can use the
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| 33 | program `autoheader' to automatically create a configuration header
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| 34 | from a `configure.in', based on the information in `acconfig.h'.
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| 35 |
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| 36 | Mail suggestions and bug reports for Autoconf to autoconf@gnu.org.
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| 37 | Please include the Autoconf version number, which you can get by running
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| 38 | "autoconf --version". The current autoconf maintainer is Ben Elliston
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| 39 | <bje@cygnus.com>.
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