obtaining software directly from the source code is a common procedure on unix computers, and generally involves the following three steps: configuring the makefile, compiling the code, and finally installing the executable to standard locations. a configure script accomplishes the first of these steps. using configure scripts is an automated method of generating makefiles before compilation to tailor the software to the system on which the executable is to be compiled and run. the final executable software is most commonly obtained by executing the following commands in a shell that is currently pointing to the directory containing the source code: