What does a typical ./configure do in Linux?

Typically the configure script when run will:

• Check some details about the machine
  on which the software is going to be
  installed. This script checks for
  lots of dependencies on your system.
  For the particular software to work
  properly, it may be requiring a lot
  of things to be existing on your
  machine already. If any of the major requirements are missing on your system, the configure script would exit and you cannot proceed with the installation, until you get those required things.

• Create the Makefile to be used in the next step.