A solution can be no simpler than the essential complexity of the problem it is solving. It is not clear to me that the essential complexity of the problem is significantly simpler than the autotools solution. Across the totality of all C&#x2F;C++-using systems, across all of the mostly-POSIX and vaguely-POSIX-ish systems, across all the libraries, the toolkits, the OSes, across the decades, across all of what it is trying to span, the essential complexity is quite large. Contemplating all that probably makes autotools come out looking pretty good in context.<p>I&#x27;d observe that every major modern language since then has taken an approach that in one way or another, obviates the need for a full autoconf. C&#x27;s contribution to large-scale code reuse was largely showing all the ways in which it could go wrong, and encouraging future language developers to get it more right to start with, which they mostly have.<p>(Note I&#x27;m not saying there aren&#x27;t any problems with the way any modern language works. But they&#x27;re still all simpler, generally more powerful, and even in their worst case, nothing like as bad as the autoconf-world&#x27;s worst case.)