Many modern sources contain a configure script in the main source directory. This script (typically generated by the developers using the GNU autoconf program) is specially designed to set up the sources so that they compile perfectly on your system. When run, the configure script probes your system, determining its capabilities, and creates Makefiles, which contain instructions for building and installing the sources on your system.

The configure script is almost always called "configure." If you find a configure script in the main source directory, odds are good that it was put there for your use. If you can't find a configure script, then your sources probably come with a standard Makefile that has been designed to work across a variety of systems -- this means that you can skip the following configuration steps, and resume this tutorial where we start talking about "make."