Amusingly, that story is what convinced me to finally read up on autotools. It has been interesting to see just how much they already covered.
In fact, the only thing the autotools don't do, that every current tool does, is download the dependencies. Which, is not surprising, since fast network connections are a relatively new thing.
And I'm actually not sure I care for the download of dependencies thing. It is nice at first, but quickly gets to people pushing another thing to download, instead of making do with what you have. This is plain embarrassing when the downloaded part offers practically nothing on top of what you had.
In fact, the only thing the autotools don't do, that every current tool does, is download the dependencies. Which, is not surprising, since fast network connections are a relatively new thing.
And I'm actually not sure I care for the download of dependencies thing. It is nice at first, but quickly gets to people pushing another thing to download, instead of making do with what you have. This is plain embarrassing when the downloaded part offers practically nothing on top of what you had.