1Autoconf 2 3Autoconf is an extensible package of m4 macros that produce shell 4scripts to automatically configure software source code packages. 5These scripts can adapt the packages to many kinds of UNIX-like 6systems without manual user intervention. Autoconf creates a 7configuration script for a package from a template file that lists the 8operating system features that the package can use, in the form of m4 9macro calls. 10 11Producing configuration scripts using Autoconf requires GNU m4. You 12must install GNU m4 (version 1.1 or later, preferably 1.3 or later 13for better performance) before configuring Autoconf, so that 14Autoconf's configure script can find it. The configuration scripts 15produced by Autoconf are self-contained, so their users do not need to 16have Autoconf (or GNU m4). 17 18Also, some optional utilities that come with Autoconf use Perl, TCL, 19and the TCL packages Expect and DejaGNU. However, none of those 20are required in order to use the main Autoconf program. If they are 21not present, the affected Autoconf utilities will not be installed. 22 23The file INSTALL can be distributed with packages that use 24Autoconf-generated configure scripts and Makefiles that conform to the 25GNU coding standards. The package's README can just give an overview 26of the package, where to report bugs, and a pointer to INSTALL for 27instructions on compilation and installation. This removes the need 28to maintain many similar sets of installation instructions. 29 30The file `acconfig.h' contains short descriptions of the C preprocessor 31variables that Autoconf can define, suitable for copying into other 32packages' configuration headers or Makefile.in files. You can use the 33program `autoheader' to automatically create a configuration header 34from a `configure.in', based on the information in `acconfig.h'. 35 36Mail suggestions and bug reports for Autoconf to autoconf@gnu.org. 37Please include the Autoconf version number, which you can get by running 38"autoconf --version". The current autoconf maintainer is Ben Elliston 39<bje@cygnus.com>. 40