The AutoTools are a collection of GNU tools to manage the build environment for highly portable projects.
They include:
Notes:
If you get weird errors like:
configure.in:13: error: possibly undefined macro: AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE If this token and others are legitimate, please use m4_pattern_allow. See the Autoconf documentation. configure.in:28: error: possibly undefined macro: AM_CONFIG_HEADER configure.in:35: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_PROG_LIBTOOL configure.in:395: error: possibly undefined macro: AM_CONDITIONAL
then this means you probably need to upgrade automake(1).
2 pages link to AutoTools: