To clarify for anyone who doubts autotools has problems - it is true that the documentation mentions cross compiling options, but it appears that the vast majority of tests in use today do not actually use these values (host/target arch, etc).
Some users recommend compiling with qemu-user to avoid fixing the tests, but besides being very slow, that methodology will still generate garbage. What is the point of running feature detection code on a desktop that will be used to configure code compiled to run on e.g. a small ARM system?
The fix is to explicitly set configuration parameters or, even better, to detect features at runtime. However if you try to contact any given project using autotools to help solve these configuration problems you will likely receive "that's not our problem" and no help from the maintainers.
Autotools is in practice less work for me than alternatives, at least while using a FOSS operating system. On Windows CMake is very well developed but handling dependencies is always a chore.
Some users recommend compiling with qemu-user to avoid fixing the tests, but besides being very slow, that methodology will still generate garbage. What is the point of running feature detection code on a desktop that will be used to configure code compiled to run on e.g. a small ARM system?
The fix is to explicitly set configuration parameters or, even better, to detect features at runtime. However if you try to contact any given project using autotools to help solve these configuration problems you will likely receive "that's not our problem" and no help from the maintainers.
Autotools is in practice less work for me than alternatives, at least while using a FOSS operating system. On Windows CMake is very well developed but handling dependencies is always a chore.