--enable-static-link: This configure option causes Bash to be linked statically --prefix=$LFS/usr: This configure option installs all of Bash's files under the $LFS/usr directory, which becomes the /usr directory when chroot'ed or reboot'ed into LFS. --bindir=$LFS/bin: This installs the executable files in $LFS/bin. We do this because we want bash to be in /bin, not in /usr/bin. One reason being: the /usr partition might be on a separate partition which has to be mounted at some point. Before that partition is mounted you need and will want to have bash available (it will be hard to execute the boot scripts without a shell for instance). --with-curses: This causes Bash to be linked against the curses library instead of the default termcap library which is becoming obsolete. It is not strictly necessary for the static bash to be linked against libncurses (it can link against a static termcap for the time being just fine because we will reinstall Bash in chapter 6 anyways, where we will use libncurses), but it's a good test to make sure that the ncurses package has been installed properly. If not, you will get in trouble later on in this chapter when you install the Texinfo package. That package requires ncurses and termcap can't reliably be used there. ln -sf bash sh: This command creates the sh symlink that points to bash. Most scripts run themselves via 'sh' (invoked by the #!/bin/sh as the first line in the scripts) which invokes a special bash mode. Bash will then behave (as closely as possible) as the original Bourne shell. The &&'s at the end of every line cause the next command to be executed only if the previous command exists with a return value of 0 indicating success. In case all of these commands are copy&pasted on the shell, it is important to be ensured that if ./configure fails, make isn't being executed and, likewise, if make fails, that make install isn't being executed, and so forth.