Writing Autoconf Macros
Why would we want to write Autoconf macros in the first place? One reason is that a project's configure.ac file might contain several instances of similar sets of code and we need the configure script to perform the same set of high-level operations on multiple directories or file sets. By converting the process into a macro, we reduce the number of lines of code in the configure.ac file, thereby reducing the number of possible points of failure. Another reason might be that an easily encapsulated bit of configure.ac code could be useful in other projects, or even to other people.
Note
The Autoconf Macro Archive provides many sets of related macros to solve common Autoconf problems. Anyone may contribute to the archive by ...
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