i dunno. autotools is hairy, but it also solved some incredibly hairy problems over an enormous breadth for a very long time in a very reliable manner. portab

i dunno. autotools is hairy, but it also solved some incredibly hairy problems over an enormous breadth for a very long time in a very reliable manner. portability across all the different unices with their weird c compilers and differing libcs that actually worked out of the box every time was a gargantuan task.