GNU Autotools

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GNU Autotools
Original author(s)	Community
Developer(s)	Free Software Foundation
Stable release	Multiple
Written in	M4 (computer language), C
Operating system	Cross-platform
Platform	GNU and others
Included with	GNU Operating System
Available in	English
License	GNU General Public License version 2
Website	www.gnu.org/software/software.html

The GNU Autotools, also known as the GNU Build System, is a suite of build automation tools designed to support building source code and packaging the resulting binaries. It supports building a codebase for multiple target systems without customizing or modifying the code. It is available on many Linux distributions and Unix-like environments.

Autotools is part of the GNU toolchain and is widely used in many free software and open source packages. Its component tools are free software, licensed under the GNU General Public License with special license exceptions^[1][2] permitting its use with proprietary software.