What are various options / arguments for "./configure" in Linux

linux configure
Mirage picture Mirage · Jun 3, 2011 · Viewed 70.4k times · Source

I have seen that while installing new software in Linux, I always have to use first configure it.

But sometimes we need to pass various options like I did today to install lxml:

./configure --with-python=/opt/python27/bin/python 
--prefix=/usr/local 
--with-libxml-prefix=/usr/local 
--with-libxml-include-prefix=/usr/local/include 
--with-libxml-libs-prefix=/usr/local/lib

Now I want to know that how will the person know that what type of paramaters like --with-python can be used?
I mean:

  1. Are those parameters same across all software packages or they vary software to software?

  2. I even tried to read documentation as well, but no one mentions those parameters.

Answer

Carlos Campderrós picture Carlos Campderrós · Jun 3, 2011 
./configure --help

That will show you all options for that particular configure script.

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