Autoconf

Introduction to Autoconf

Autoconf is an extensible（可扩展的） package of M4 macros that produce shell scripts to automatically configure（自动配置） software source code packages（软件源码安装包）. 

These scripts can adapt the packages to many kinds of UNIX-like systems without manual user intervention（介入，干预）. 

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 should install GNU M4  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).