> Which makes me think... why did I just sit through that long "configure" script run, and why did the developer bother messing with autotools, if this project

> Which makes me think... why did I just sit through that long "configure" script run, and why did the developer bother messing with autotools, if this project isn't even going to bother targeting anything but Linux with the GNU toolchain to build it? There's more than just compiling, it adds a bunch of common stuff "out of the box" (with a line or two of configuration). Test runners, pkg-config, installation, cleaning, out of tree builds, etc. Nothing magic that you couldn't do yourself, but IME by the time you do it your makefile is much less simple, it's taken a non-trivial amount of time and possibly has a bunch of subtle errors. Even on my own little projects that will never run on another computer let alone another OS I find autotools worthwhile. If I had one major complaint it's that it still puts build artifacts in the root directory.