Flow diagram including configure, autoconf and automake, three tools in the GNU build system

configure scripts are generated by the Autotools suite of build management tools. These scripts query the system on which they run for environment settings, platform architecture, and the existence and location of required build and runtime dependencies. They then use the gathered intel to process and fill out templates, customarily ending in .in. After successful completion, it is common for configure scripts to print a report to the developer invoking them. processing Autoconf is a tool for producing shell scripts that automatically configure software source code packages to adapt to many kinds of UNIX-like systems. ... Automake is a programming tool that produces portable makefiles for use by the make program, used in compiling software. ... Autotools is the general name given to the set of build tools common in Unix development today. ... Intelligence (abbreviated or ) is the process and the result of gathering information and analyzing it to answer questions or obtain advance warnings needed to plan for the future. ...

Because of the platform independence and broad developer experience with the configure script interface, many popular pieces of Free Software and Proprietary Software use this system during their system detection and Makefile generation phase. After configure scripts have been created, building software that makes use of them is as simple as This article is about free software as defined by the sociopolitical free software movement; for information on software distributed without charge, see freeware. ... Proprietary software is software with restrictions on using, copying and modifying as enforced by the proprietor. ... make is a computer program that automates the compilation of programs whose files are dependent on each other. ...

./configure && make && make install

Free Software that uses configure

• Apache HTTP Server
• MySQL
• PHP
• GCC
• Mono
• GNOME and GTK+
• KDE, but not QT
• NcFTP

Apache HTTP Server is a free software/open source web server for Unix-like systems, Microsoft Windows, Novell NetWare and other operating systems. ... MySQL (pronounced ) is a multithreaded, multi-user, SQL Database Management System (DBMS) with more than six million installations. ... PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a reflective programming language originally designed for producing dynamic Web pages. ... GCC may stand for: Gulf Cooperation Council GNU Compiler Collection (formerly, the GNU C Compiler) Garde côtière canadienne (Canadian Coast Guard) Germanna Community College Glendale Community College global carbon cycle Global Climate Coalition Grand Council of the Crees (gcc. ... Mono is a project led by Novell (formerly by Ximian) to create an ECMA standard compliant . ... A gnome (or Nisse) hiding behind a toadstool. ... The GIMP Toolkit—abbreviated, and almost exclusively known, as GTK+—is one of the two most popular widget toolkits for the X Window System for creating graphical user interfaces. ... KDE (K Desktop Environment) (IPA: ) is a free software project which aims to be a powerful ecosystem for an easy-to-use desktop environment. ... In computer programming, Qt is a cross-platform application development framework, widely used for the development of GUI programs, and, since the release of Qt 4, also used for developing non-GUI programs such as console tools and servers. ... NcFTP was the first alternative FTP client program, which debuted in 1990. ...

Proprietary Software that uses configure

(these are difficult to cite due to the nature of Proprietary Software) Proprietary software is software with restrictions on using, copying and modifying as enforced by the proprietor. ...

• NcFTPd^{[citation needed]}

Dependency Checking

In new development, library dependency checking has been done in great part using pkg-config via the m4 macro, PKG_CHECK_MODULES. Prior to pkg-config's popularity, separate m4 macros were created to locate files known to be included in the distribution of libraries depended upon. A linux specific command, pkg-config helps to handle which libraries someone has installed on the computer. ... m4 is a macro processing language designed by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie. ...