1. GNU's Autoconf is a tool for configuring source code and Makefiles. Using Autoconf, programmers can create portable and configurable packages, since the person building the package is allowed to specify various configuration options. You should install Autoconf if you are developing software and you would like to use it to create shell scripts that will configure yoursource code packages. If you are installing Autoconf, you will alsoneed to install the GNU m4 package. Note that the Autoconf package is not required for the end-user whomay be configuring software with an Autoconf-generated script; Autoconf is only required for the generation of the scripts, not their use. From Redhat 8.0 RPM

2. GNU's Autoconf is a tool for configuring source code and Makefiles.Using Autoconf, programmers can create portable and configurable packages, since the person building the package is allowed to specify various configuration options. You should install Autoconf if you are developing software and you'd like to use it to create shell scripts which will configure yoursource code packages. If you are installing Autoconf, you will also need to install the GNU m4 package. Note that the Autoconf package is not required for the end user who may be configuring software with an Autoconf-generated script; Autoconf is only required for the generation of the scripts, not their use.-- PLEASE NOTICE ---> this version is meant to coexist with autoconf-2.5x;to that end, the various binaries are actually linked to a script which decides which version to execute. It tries to be clever and will execute2.5x if `configure.ac' is present, or if `configure.in' contains AC_PREREQand the value's 3 first letters are stringwise greater than '2.1'. Ifanything fails, you can manually select 2.13 by providing the environmentvariable WANT_AUTOCONF_2_1 set to `1' (use WANT_AUTOCONF_2_5 if you wantthe 2.5x version). From Mandrake 9.0 RPM

3. automatic configure script builder The standard for FSF source packages. This is only useful if you write your own programs or if you extensively modify other people's programs. This version of autoconf contains many changes from the previous release, version 2.13. For now, it depends on autoconf2.13 to provide compatibility. This will eventually go away, so please upgrade your autoconfiscations. From Debian 3.0r0 APT

4. creates scripts to configure source code packages using templates From whatis