Proposed rework of autotools call structure from port Makefiles

[Ade Lovett]

Adam Weinberger wrote:
> Is specifying the exact versions always necessary? Is it possible to
> examine a configure.in or something to determine the version of
> libtool/auto* needed, and then run that? That would also help with
> things like the recent libtool13->libtool15 sweep, if one could just
> define USE_AUTOTOOLS=autoconf and the build system could intuit the rest.

Unfortunately, it's been my experience that such auto-detection of the
"required" version is insanely prone to error.  There are so many
different styles of generated scripts (particularly for autoconf and
automake), that such parsing would be extremely tricky.

That's not to say that it's impossible, but I think it's beyond the
scope of what I'm trying to do here -- it could certainly be considered
at a later date.

On reflection, I'm wondering whether it would make sense to have two
variables, USE_AUTOTOOLS and WANT_AUTOTOOLS, each with just a simple
list of things that are needed.  This is more in spirit with other
USE/WANT variables, and doesn't add too much complexity.

Thoughts?

-aDe