On 2020-09-09 10:37, david allen wrote:
> Thanks! Everything seems to be ok now.
>
> I don't care for the fake configure idea. I do think that since the
> current system is a considerable departure from tradition, README.txt
> should emphasize more the change.

Currently the top of the README.txt says:

----
BUILDING AND INSTALLING FLTK UNDER UNIX AND Mac OS X

In most cases you can just type "make". This will run
configure with the default (no) options and then compile
everything.
----

So that should have worked.

Curious which passages steered you wrong so we can fix them.

There are several README files, so wouldn't be surprised if any one
of them might have a passage that is dated.

Can you say how you created 'configure' in the first place
that gave the error in the OP? Then we can search for that command
in the docs to make sure it's expunged.

(The OP just shows the error, not the commands used to create configure
or the arguments it was invoked with; that could be helpful)

I think all the README files that refer to creating configure mention
running 'autogen.sh' which should have worked too, e.g. grepping the README*
files for 'auto', I found only these specific references to running the
automake tools:

README.Unix.txt:NOCONFIGURE=1 ./autogen.sh
README.macOS.md:NOCONFIGURE=1 ./autogen.sh

..as that script creates the files that were missing in the OP.