Question

what does run the script "./configure" mean? How do I run a script? I know nothing.

Answer 1

First, that looks like a Unix command, so if this isn't a Linux machine, forget about it.

./ means this directory, so ./configure means run the program configure in this directory. Probably, there was a cd (Change Directory) command before this one.

Answer 2

In general, the configuration script sets up for compiling code by going through packages and checking for dependencies while at the same time allowing you to turn on and off options or change settings. Just as a random example, this might be something like:

./configure use_ssl=true min_css_version=2

That might be used to prepare to compile some web related program that had secure sockets (ssl) as an option and allowed for different levels of Cascading Style Sheets.

Exactly what options a configuration script allows will be different for every program. In fact, some have NO options and only check for dependencies.