configure.info: Generated Developer Files

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Generated Developer Files

   The following files would be generated by the developer.
   When using automake, these files are normally not generated manually
after the first time.  Instead, the generated `Makefile' contains rules
to automatically rebuild the files as required.  When
`AM_MAINTAINER_MODE' is used in `configure.in' (the normal case in
Cygnus code), the automatic rebuilding rules will only be defined if
you configure using the `--enable-maintainer-mode' option.
   When using automatic rebuilding, it is important to ensure that all
the various tools have been built and installed on your `PATH'.  Using
automatic rebuilding is highly recommended, so much so that I'm not
going to explain what you have to do if you don't use it.
`configure'
     This is the configure script which will be run when building the
     package.  This is generated by `autoconf' from `configure.in' and
     `aclocal.m4'.  This is a shell script.
`Makefile.in'
     This is the file which the configure script will turn into the
     `Makefile' at build time.  This file is generated by `automake'
     from `Makefile.am'.  If you aren't using automake, you must write
     this file yourself.  This file is pretty much a normal `Makefile',
     with some configure substitutions for certain variables.
`aclocal.m4'
     This file is created by the `aclocal' program, based on the
     contents of `configure.in' and `acinclude.m4' (or, as noted in the
     description of `acinclude.m4' above, on the contents of an `m4'
     subdirectory).  This file contains definitions of autoconf macros
     which `autoconf' will use when generating the file `configure'.
     These autoconf macros may be defined by you in `acinclude.m4' or
     they may be defined by other packages such as automake, libtool or
     gettext.  If you aren't using automake, you will normally write
     this file yourself; in that case, if `configure.in' uses only
     standard autoconf macros, this file will not be needed at all.
`config.in'
     This file is created by `autoheader' based on `acconfig.h' and
     `configure.in'.  At build time, the configure script will define
     some of the macros in it to create `config.h', which may then be
     included by your program.  This permits your C code to use
     preprocessor conditionals to change its behaviour based on the
     characteristics of the host system.  This file may also be called
     `config.h.in'.
`stamp.h-in'
     This rather uninteresting file, which I omitted from the picture,
     is generated by `automake'.  It always contains the string
     `timestamp'.  It is used as a timestamp file indicating whether
     `config.in' is up to date.  Using a timestamp file means that
     `config.in' can be marked as up to date without actually changing
     its modification time.  This is useful since `config.in' depends
     upon `configure.in', but it is easy to change `configure.in' in a
     way which does not affect `config.in'.