Some software packages require complex site-specific information.
Some examples are host names to use for certain services, company names, and email addresses to contact. Since some configuration scripts generated by Metaconfig ask for such information interactively, people sometimes wonder how to get that information in Autoconf-generated configuration scripts, which aren't interactive. Such site configuration information should be put in a file that is edited only by users , not by programs. The location of the file can either be based on the prefix variable, or be a standard location such as the user's home directory. It could even be specified by an environment variable.