This module contains various files needed to bootstrap MATE modules built from git. It contains the following components: 1. A common "autogen.sh" script that can be used to configure a source directory checked out from git. 2. Some commonly used macros (quite a small set these days -- macros should be packaged with their respective modules). 3. Some files used to build user documentation. To make use of the common autogen script, create a stub autogen.sh script in your module. See the example script in autogen.sh.example file in mate-common documentation folder. Then put the following in your configure.ac or configure.in file: MATE_COMMON_INIT This macro is equivalent to the following two lines (which you can use instead if you don't want to depend on mate-common macros): AC_SUBST([ACLOCAL_AMFLAGS], ["\${ACLOCAL_FLAGS}"]) Or if you are using the AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIR macro: AC_SUBST([ACLOCAL_AMFLAGS], ["-I $ac_macro_dir \${ACLOCAL_FLAGS}"]) This will make sure that autoconf macros will be found when you rebuild the package without rerunning autogen.sh.