--- /dev/null
+These files are used by a program called aclocal (part of the GNU automake
+package). aclocal uses these files to create aclocal.m4 which is in turn
+used by autoconf to create the configure script at the the top level in
+this distribution.
+
+Some of these files are copies of the ones in the automake-1.1l
+distribution. Others are specific to this package.
+Eventually, I expect that aclocal will evolve so that this directory
+can contain only the .m4 files specific to this package.
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