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Why is it necessary though everything is specified in a makefile ?
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A configuration file, also known as a config file, is a local file that controls the operations of a program, utility or process. Linux configuration files contain the settings and instructions for different systems, utilities, applications and processes.
A configure script is an executable script designed to aid in developing a program to be run on a wide number of different computers. It matches the libraries on the user's computer, with those required by the program before compiling it from its source code.
configure is normally a (generated) shell script which is packaged in Unix-based applications and is used to detect certain machine settings and set up needed files for make to do its job. Look for a configure. bat or a file called configure in the QT directory and run it.
The configure.ac file is used to create the ./configure script. It consists of a series of macros which are processed and expanded by autoconf . These macros can check for packages and libraries, handle --enable and --with switches, and generate various files.
configure checks the dependencies for building the package and finds out a way to invoke them. make default for make all builds the package by reading configuration template in Makefile / Makefile.in . The process of configure in the first step spits out a custom Makefile specific to your machine.
autoreconf is a Autotool which is used to create automatically buildable source code for Unix-like systems. Autotool is a common name for autoconf, automake, etc. These all together are termed as Autotools.
Typically the configure script when run will:
Check some details about the machine on which the software is going to be installed. This script checks for lots of dependencies on your system. For the particular software to work properly, it may be requiring a lot of things to be existing on your machine already. If any of the major requirements are missing on your system, the configure script would exit and you cannot proceed with the installation, until you get those required things.
Create the Makefile to be used in the next step.
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