build - What does a typical ./configure do in Linux?

Question

Why is it necessary though everything is specified in a makefile ?

Answer 1

Typically the configure script when run will:

• Check some details about the machine on which the software is going to be installed. This script checks for lots of dependencies on your system. For the particular software to work properly, it may be requiring a lot of things to be existing on your machine already. If any of the major requirements are missing on your system, the configure script would exit and you cannot proceed with the installation, until you get those required things.

• Create the Makefile to be used in the next step.