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Autoconf

Autoconf is an extensible package of M4 macros that produce shell
scripts to automatically configure software source code packages.
These scripts can adapt the packages to many kinds of UNIX-like
systems without manual user intervention.  Autoconf creates a
configuration script for a package from a template file that lists the
operating system features that the package can use, in the form of M4
macro calls.

Producing configuration scripts using Autoconf requires GNU M4 and
Perl.  You should install GNU M4 (version 1.4.5 or later is required;
1.4.12 or later is recommended) and Perl (5.005_03 or later) before
configuring Autoconf, so that Autoconf's configure script can find
them.  The configuration scripts produced by Autoconf are
self-contained, so their users do not need to have Autoconf (or GNU
M4, Perl, etc.).

You can get GNU M4 here:

ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/m4/

The file INSTALL should be distributed with packages that use
Autoconf-generated configure scripts and Makefiles that conform to the
GNU coding standards.  The package's README can just give an overview
of the package, where to report bugs, and a pointer to INSTALL for
instructions on compilation and installation.  This removes the need
to maintain many similar sets of installation instructions.

Be sure to read BUGS (in particular since this is a beta release) and
INSTALL.

Mail suggestions to autoconf@gnu.org, report bugs to
bug-autoconf@gnu.org, and submit patches to autoconf-patches@gnu.org.
All changes can be tracked at the read-only autoconf-commit@gnu.org.
Always include the Autoconf version number, which you can get by
running `autoconf --version'.  Archives of bug-autoconf@gnu.org can be
found in <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-autoconf/>, and
similarly for the other mailing lists.

Licensing

Autoconf is released under the General Public License (GPL).
Additionally, Autoconf includes a licensing exception in some of its
source files; see the respective copyright notices for how your
project is impacted by including scripts generated by Autoconf.

This version of Autoconf uses GPLv2+ plus the above-mentioned
exceptions for its installed executables, as described in COPYING.
Meanwhile, several source files within the Autoconf project are under
GPLv3+, as described in COPYINGv3; these files are used for building
and installing Autoconf, but are not present in the installed
programs.  The entire Autoconf project will move to GPLv3+ when the
exception statements have been reformulated in terms of the Additional
Permissions as described in section 7 of GPLv3.

For more licensing information, see
<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html>.

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