Once the developer has checked out the sources and selected a base release, it is time to start using the build environment tools. The picture here is quite a bit more complicated than on the source code management side. However, the fundamentals are relatively easy, and one just needs to learn the cycle in which to use the tools. Non-SRT tools involved in this process are GNU make and GNU autoconf , both of which get input from both the developers and the release tools.
GNU make is the utility that incrementally builds executables and libraries from the source code.
To do its job, it needs to have a makefile that describes what is to be done. The description comes in the form of rules that define targets that can be generated from a list of dependencies by applying a set of commands. Make examines the rules and decides what needs to be done to get the executables and libraries up to date. Large parts of the makefiles tend to be the same from one package to another. This is because the rules to build an object file from a source file tend to stay the same.