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Err, pedantically, configure was not for cross Linux distro compatibility, but for cross unix compatibility. It existed long before Linux was a sparkle in Linus’s eye.

And even then, it handled even some non unix environments as well.



GNU autoconf was first released a few months before Linux.

Is there some older implementation/standard/practice of ./configure before autoconf?


Autoconf makes it convenient to write configure scripts. Configure scripts existed long before autoconf, but were written piecemeal.




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