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.  The
configuration scripts produced by Autoconf are self-contained, so
their users do not need to have Autoconf (or GNU m4).  Also, some
optional utilities that come with Autoconf use Perl, Bash, TCL, and
the TCL packages Expect and DejaGNU.  However, none of those are
required in order to use the main Autoconf program.  If they are not
present, the affected Autoconf utilities will not be installed.

The file INSTALL can 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.

The file `acconfig.h' contains short descriptions of the C preprocessor
variables that Autoconf can define, suitable for copying into other
packages' configuration headers or Makefile.in files.  You can use the
program `autoheader' to automatically create a configuration header
from a `configure.in', based on the information in `acconfig.h'.

Mail suggestions and bug reports for Autoconf to
bug-gnu-utils@prep.ai.mit.edu.  Please include the Autoconf version
number, which you can get by running "autoconf --version".