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C.5 configure

The purpose of the preceding processes was to create the input files necessary for configure to run correctly. You would ship your project with the generated script and the files in columns, other input and processes (except `config.cache'), but configure is designed to be run by the person installing your package. Naturally, you will run it too while you develop your project, but the files it produces are specific to your development machine, and are not shipped with your package -- the person installing it later will run configure and generate output files specific to their own machine.

Running the configure script on the build host executes the various tests originally specified by the `configure.in' file, and then creates another script, `config.status'. This new script generates the `config.h' header file from `config.h.in', and `Makefile's from the named `Makefile.in's. Once `config.status' has been created, it can be executed by itself to regenerate files without rerunning all the tests. Additionally, if `AC_PROG_LIBTOOL' was used, then ltconfig is used to generate a libtool script.

 
user input files   other input      processes          output files
================   ===========      =========          ============

                                     .---------,
                   config.site - - ->|         |
                  config.cache - - ->|configure| - - -> config.cache
                                     |         +-,
                                     `-+-------' |
                                       |         |----> config.status
                   config.h.in ------->|config-  |----> config.h
                   Makefile.in ------->|  .status|----> Makefile
                                       |         |----> stamp-h
                                       |         +--,
                                     .-+         |  |
                                     | `------+--'  |
                   ltmain.sh ------->|ltconfig|-------> libtool
                                     |        |     |
                                     `-+------'     |
                                       |config.guess|
                                       | config.sub |
                                       `------------'


This document was generated by Gary V. Vaughan on May, 24 2001 using texi2html