The configure script is responsible for getting ready to build the software on your specific system. It makes sure all of the dependencies for the rest of the build and install process are available, and finds out whatever it needs to know to use those dependencies. … Unix programs are often written in C, so we’ll usually need a C compiler to build them. In these cases the configure script will establish that your system does indeed have a C compiler, and find out what it’s called and where to find it. Once configure has done its job, we can invoke make to build the software. This runs a series of tasks defined in a Makefile to build the finished program from its source code. The tarball you download usually doesn’t include a finished Makefile. Instead it comes with a template called Makefile.in and the configure script produces a customised Makefile specific to your system.