The GNU autoreconf tool, updates configure scripts by running autoconf, autoheader, aclocal, automake, and libtoolize in specified directories and subdirectories. This command is seldom invoked manually. It is usually called automatically from other autoconf tools.
If you encounter below error:
autoreconf: command not found
you may try installing below package as per your choice of distribution.
| Distribution | Command |
|---|---|
| OS X | brew install autoconf |
| Debian | apt-get install autoconf |
| Ubuntu | apt-get install autoconf |
| Alpine | apk add autoconf |
| Arch Linux | pacman -S autoconf |
| Kali Linux | apt-get install autoconf |
| CentOS | yum install autoconf |
| Fedora | dnf install autoconf |
| Raspbian | apt-get install autoconf |
| Docker | docker run cmd.cat/autoreconf autoreconf |
autoconf vs autoreconf
Running autoconf is simple: Just execute it in the same directory as your configure.ac file. Running autoreconf has exactly the same effect as running autoconf, except that autoreconf will also do the right thing when you start adding Automake and Libtool functionality to your build system. That is, it will execute all of the Autotools in the right order based on the contents of your configure.ac file.
autoreconf is smart enough to only execute the tools you need, in the order you need them, with the options you want (with one caveat that I’ll mention shortly). Therefore, running autoreconf is the recommended method for executing the Autotools tool chain.