Autotools and the configure script come from a history of distributing software purely as source code instead of binaries. From the early GNU days. https://ww

Autotools and the configure script come from a history of distributing software purely as source code instead of binaries. From the early GNU days. https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html#Managing-Releases https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html#Managing-R... The intention was that software would be released as source code "tarballs" and contain a configure script, written in the lowest common denominator scripting language to configure that source code to compile on the users system. Additionally by distributing the configure script itself instead of configure.ac, users tend to need fewer dependencies that they don't already have. It's _less_ applicable now that most users get pre-built binaries from package managers and it just feel pretty antiquated overall. But yeah the intention is that configure is platform agnostic and prepares your source code tree to build on the current platform. Whereas autoconf/autoreconf is intended as a tool for the developer to make writing "configure" a lot easier.