AFAICT if you need to modify the build configuration -changing optimization levels is one such things since optimizations can potentially break applications- yo

AFAICT if you need to modify the build configuration -changing optimization levels is one such things since optimizations can potentially break applications- you are expected to install (and hence, update) autotools as if you were a developer of the program/library. But TBH my comment was more about the other build tools than autotools... Autotools have many issues and are way more complex than need to be, but i do not see a build tool that does exactly the same thing as autotools do, despite being so many tools out there.