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. You must install GNU m4 (version 1.1 or later, preferably 1.3 or later for better performance) before configuring Autoconf, so that Autoconf's configure script can find it. 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, 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 autoconf@gnu.org. Please include the Autoconf version number, which you can get by running "autoconf --version". The current autoconf maintainer is Ben Elliston .