Editing GNU Autotools (section)

== Motivation ==

It can be difficult to make a software program portable. Compilers differ from system to system. Certain library functions are missing on some systems. Compiler files (such as C headers) may have different names. Shared libraries may be compiled and installed in different ways. One way to handle platform differences is to write conditionally compiled code (i.e. via <code>#ifdef</code>), but because of the wide variety of build environments, this approach quickly becomes unmanageable. Autotools is designed to address this problem more manageably.