For installation instructions see Section 6.34.
Autoconf (2.57):
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/
Autoconf produces shell scripts which automatically configure source code.
Installed programs: autoconf, autoheader, autom4te, autoreconf, autoscan, autoupdate and ifnames
autoconf is a tool for producing shell scripts that automatically configure software source code packages to adapt to many kinds of Unix-like systems. The configuration scripts it produces are independent -- running them does not require the autoconf program.
autoheader is a tool for creating template files of C #define statements for configure to use.
autom4te is a wrapper for the M4 macro processor.
autoreconf comes in handy when there are a lot of autoconf-generated configure scripts around. The program runs autoconf and autoheader repeatedly (where appropriate) to remake the autoconf configure scripts and configuration header templates in a given directory tree.
autoscan can help to create a configure.in file for a software package. It examines the source files in a directory tree, searching them for common portability problems and creates a configure.scan file that serves as as a preliminary configure.in for the package.
autoupdate modifies a configure.in file that still calls autoconf macros by their old names to use the current macro names.
ifnames can be helpful when writing a configure.in for a software package. It prints the identifiers that the package uses in C preprocessor conditionals. If a package has already been set up to have some portability, this program can help to determine what configure needs to check. It can fill in some gaps in a configure.in file generated by autoscan.