On Unix and related systems, a file that is run before [make] and '''make install'''.
Often, but not always, this file is a [sh] shell script generated by [autoconf].

If you obtain code from a CVS repository (or a file built from the CVS repository), you may find that while the instructions talk about running a command called configure, there isn't such a file. If, however, there is a configure.in file, that means that the configure.in and autoconf, together, may generate the configure. I say ''may'' because there often are several programs that one ends up needing to have to be able to build configure. For instance, one frequently needs the [m4] command (a macro preprocessor). [[fill in the names of the rest of the suite of programs needed as a part of configure]]
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configure has a number of flags from which one can choose.

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When building older Tcl versions or Tcl extensions based on [TEA], ./[configure] might fail with an error resembling:

 ./configure: line 7624: syntax error near unexpected token `)'

See [bash] for explanation and the simple solution.

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[Category Glossary] |
[Category Deployment]