1.4. Automake Development
By 1994, Autoconf was a solid framework for handling the differences between Unix variants. However, program developers still had to write large 'Makefile.in' files to use it. The 'configure' script generated by autoconf would transform the 'Makefile.in' file into a 'Makefile' used by the make program.
A 'Makefile.in' file has to describe how to build the program. In the Imake equivalent of a 'Makefile.in', known as an 'Imakefile', it is only necessary to describe which source files are used to build the program. When Imake generates a 'Makefile', it adds the rules for how to build the program itself. Later versions of the BSD make program also include rules for building a program.
Because most programs are built in ...
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