"Autoconf is an extensible package of m4 macros that produce shell scripts to automatically configure software source code packages," according to its official home page [L1 ]. But it really is ... for the purpose of ...
autoconf acts on configure.in to generate configure.
This [L2 ] "Compile-Howto" usefully introduces autoconf.
[L3 ] explains "The Autoconf Language". Particularly useful is the explanation of [brackets], which seem to behave very much as {braces} do in Tcl.
drh describes "Using Autoconf With Mktclapp" [L4 ].
"Stop the autoconf insanity! Why we need a new build system." [L5 ]
[Refer to TIP 34?]
Helpful tip: autoconf 2.5 (ick!) has a habit of creating a subdirectory called "autom4te.cache" each time it's run. The purpose of this directory is supposedly to make subsequent autoconf runs go faster; but in practice it mostly seems to just make subsequent autoconf runs do the wrong thing because of stale data.
To make autoconf 2.5 (ick!) stop doing that, create a ".autom4te.cfg" file in your home directory containing the following lines:
begin-language: "Autoconf" args: --no-cache end-language: "Autoconf"
Category Application | Category Deployment | Category Dev. tools | Category Porting