title: why is "autoreconf" not used often?
body: <p>I am newbie of Autotools. From my understanding, one would use the following basic steps to build software using Autotools:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><code>autoreconf --install</code></li>
  <li><code>./configure</code></li>
  <li><code>make</code></li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>However, I noticed that most open source software packages (on Linux) does not need the step 1. They most time just need step 2 and 3 to build. It seems that they already are packaged with <code>Makefile.in</code>.  I am wondering why?  Do they manually code the <code>Makefile.in</code>, or the software developer uses <code>autoreconf</code> to generate the <code>Makefile.in</code> before creating the software package? </p>
  
  <p>Thanks.</p>