GNU Autoconf, Automake, and Libtool
by Gary V. Vaughan, Ben Elliston, Tom Tromey, Ian Lance Taylor
1.3. configure Development
The Cygnus 'configure' script and the original GCC 'configure' script both had to be updated for each new Unix variant they supported. This meant that packages that used them were continually out of date as new Unix variants appeared. It was not hard for the developer to add support for a new system variant; however, package users could not do so easily themselves.
The same was true of Imake as it was commonly used. Although it was possible for a user to build and configure Imake for a particular system, it was not commonly done. In practice, packages that use Imake (such as the X Window system) are shipped with configuration information detailed for specific Unix variants.
Because Metaconfig and Autoconf used feature ...
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