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Don't require people to change 'source code' to configure your programs

Often, programs have build time configuration settings for features they include, paths they use, and so on. Some of the time, people suggest that the way to handle these is not through systems like 'configure' scripts (whether produced by Autoconf or some other means) but instead by having people edit their settings into things such as your Makefiles or header files ('source code' in a broad sense).

As someone who has spent a bunch of time and effort building other people's software over the years, my strong opinion is that you should not do this. One of the painful lessons about maintaining systems that we've learned over the years is that you really don't want to have two people changing the same file, including the software provider and you. You should ship them in some empty state and promise never to change that, so that people building your software can copy their old versions from their old build of your software into your new release (or never get a merge conflict when they pull from your version control system repository).

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