Autotools Tutorial

Autotools are the set of GNU tools that configure their source packages for a particular computer system. If you have ever compiled a program using “configure” followed by “make” commands then chances are you have already used the output of Autotools. The purpose of these “configure” scripts is to create Makefiles and “config.h” files for your projects that point to libraries, define or undefine C macros, and make a range of other adjustments as needed to compile a program on a particular computer.

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