&quot;<i>The low point was in 2014 when I was trying to compile a package that intentionally did not ship a configure file and made the user explicitly call autoconf.</i>&quot;<p>At the risk of having to admit I&#x27;ve had my share of bad experiences with autotools, <i>don&#x27;t ever do that.</i> That is a big sign with flashing lights and sirens, saying that you should put that package down and leave it alone. Because...<p>&quot;<i>This would have been ok except that in the 3 or so years between when the code was released and I was trying to build it, autotools made some backward-incompatible changes and autoconf&#x2F;automake errored out, with no indication of how to fix those.</i>&quot;<p>The version of autotools someone was using when they wrote the scripts is very closely tied to the scripts. It&#x27;s not at all a good idea to use a different version of the autotools.