序曲

1. Introduction / 序曲

Autoconf, Automake and Libtool are packages for making your software more portable and to simplify building it--usually on someone else's system. Software portability and effective build systems are crucial aspects of modern software engineering practice. It is unlikely that a software project would be started today with the expectation that the software would run on only one platform. Hardware constraints may change the choice of platform, new customers with different kinds of systems may emerge or your vendor might introduce incompatible changes in newer versions of their operating system. In addition, tools that make building software easier and less error prone are valuable.

Autoconf, Automake 以及 Libtool 是用來讓你所開發的軟體能更具可攜性，且更容易在別人的電腦系統上編譯的工具套件。近年來，軟體的可攜性與有效率的編譯與建置系統在近代軟體工程實務上漸漸佔有重要的一席之地。因為種種原因，在現在很少有軟體開發專案會在開始時就決定只支援單一平台。比如說: 硬體的限制可能會影響平台的選擇，使用不同系統平台的客戶可能會出現，或是您的作業系統軟體供應商可能會做出與舊系統不相容的變更。除此之外，能夠簡化並減少軟體編譯建置之流程與錯誤的工具是相當有價值的。

Autoconf is a tool that makes your packages more portable by performing tests to discover system characteristics before the package is compiled. Your source code can then adapt to these differences.

Autoconf 是一個可以讓你的軟體更具可攜性的工具，他會在編譯前執行一序列測試程式找出系統所安裝軟體的狀況，你的程式碼可以據此在不同的系統之間調適。

Automake is a tool for generating `Makefile's--descriptions of what to build--that conform to a number of standards. Automake substantially simplifies the process of describing the organization of a package and performs additional functions such as dependency tracking between source files.

Automake 是一個用來產生 `Makefile' -- 指出有哪些東西要編譯或建置的描述檔 -- 的工具。利用 Automake 可以大幅的簡化描述要建置套件內容的流程，並且可以提供一些額外的功能，如: 原始碼間的相依性檢查等等。

Libtool is a command line interface to the compiler and linker that makes it easy to portably generate static and shared libraries, regardless of the platform it is running on.

Libtool 是一個包裝了編譯器與鏈結器的命令列程式，這個工具可以為你產生靜態連結或動態連結的函式庫，你完全不用在意進行建置作業的系統平台到底是哪個。