Question

The term has several definition according to Wikipedia, however what I’m really interested in is creating a program that has all its needed dependencies included within the source folder, so the end user doesn’t need to install additional libraries for the app to install. For example, how Mac apps has all its dependencies all within the program itself already…

or is there a function that autotools does this? I’m programming in the Linux environment…

Answer 1

Are you talking about the source code of your application, or about your application binary?

The answer I’d give for both the cases depends on what libraries you’re using.

If you’re using libraries that you can find anywhere, that are somehow standard and/or that are quite big, you shouldn’t attach them to your application, just require them both to build and to run your application.

Anyway don’t be much concerned about your source code: little people will build your application, and they probably know something about programming and how a Linux system works; it won’t be a big deal to require many (also not-so-common) dependences to build your application.
For what concerns the binary version it could be a little more problematic, since it will be used by end users who often don’t know anything about libraries and programming stuff: you could choose to statically link the smallest and most uncommon libraries to your binary, in order to have less dependences.