> Autoconf is just a complicated system for finding and detecting third party libraries. If an application just uses the standard library, the build system can

> Autoconf is just a complicated system for finding and detecting third party libraries. If an application just uses the standard library, the build system can be very simple and reliable. It's slightly more than that. Autoconf is a Makefile generator. It was designed to do system introspection and perform sanity checks, and configure projects so that they could be built and installed in multiple platforms. It's always possible to switch back to Makefiles. You'd be foregoing sanity checks, abstractions that come for free, and you'd have to fill in the blanks left out by missing features such as what compiler I use and how to configure the compiler and how to put together Release and Debug builds and how to consume dependencies and where do I install the project. Complaining about build systems is like complaining about a high level language: you might focus on the bloat, but you completely miss the extra work you have to reinvent the wheel and have to maintain it forever.