The configure script creates a file named `config.status'
which describes which configuration options were specified when the
package was last configured. This file is a shell script which,
if run, will recreate the same configuration.
You can give `config.status' the `--recheck' option to update
itself. This option is useful if you change configure, so that
the results of some tests might be different from the previous run. The
`--recheck' option re-runs configure with the same arguments
you used before, plus the `--no-create' option, which prevent
configure from running `config.status' and creating
`Makefile' and other files, and the `--no-recursion' option,
which prevents configure from running other configure
scripts in subdirectories. (This is so other `Makefile' rules can
run `config.status' when it changes; see section Automatic Remaking,
for an example).
`config.status' also accepts the options `--help', which
prints a summary of the options to `config.status', and
`--version', which prints the version of Autoconf used to create
the configure script that generated `config.status'.
`config.status' checks several optional environment variables that can alter its behavior:
configure for the `--recheck'
option. It must be Bourne-compatible. The default is `/bin/sh'.
configure
scripts shouldn't be merged because they are maintained separately.
The following variables provide one way for separately distributed
packages to share the values computed by configure. Doing so can
be useful if some of the packages need a superset of the features that
one of them, perhaps a common library, does. These variables allow a
`config.status' file to create files other than the ones that its
`configure.in' specifies, so it can be used for a different package.
AC_OUTPUT in `configure.in'.
#define statements.
The default is the arguments given to AC_CONFIG_HEADER; if that
macro was not called, `config.status' ignores this variable.
These variables also allow you to write `Makefile' rules that regenerate only some of the files. For example, in the dependencies given above (see section Automatic Remaking), `config.status' is run twice when `configure.in' has changed. If that bothers you, you can make each run only regenerate the files for that rule:
config.h: stamp-h
stamp-h: config.h.in config.status
CONFIG_FILES= CONFIG_HEADERS=config.h ./config.status
echo > stamp-h
Makefile: Makefile.in config.status
CONFIG_FILES=Makefile CONFIG_HEADERS= ./config.status
(If `configure.in' does not call AC_CONFIG_HEADER, there is
no need to set CONFIG_HEADERS in the make rules.)
Go to the first, previous, next, last section, table of contents.