Why is it necessary though everything is specified in a makefile ?
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.