I do so feel related to that article. I compile distros all day for embedded systems, and I am certain that perhaps 80% of the build time is /just/ autocrap too

I do so feel related to that article. I compile distros all day for embedded systems, and I am certain that perhaps 80% of the build time is /just/ autocrap tools checking for the bazillion's time if 'strlen' exists on the system, and a myriad of other things that are either irrelevant, or constant anyway. The /other/ problem is that most of the time spent fixing build issues is never fixing actual code; most of the time is spent trying to go around these autocrap tools failing to work as intended, and as the article describes, it's a nightmare. All the while, with a bit of care, you can build most programs with a half page makefile, with very little problems; in fact, very often when I've banged my head for a while trying to fix an autotool nigthmare, that's exactly what I do!