>> Too bad that they suck so hard
i'm a beginner, and i agree with Ara when he says:

> must continually evolve to support every /bin/sh shell

or better freeze because the compatibility is, as i see,
grant to obsolete systems. 

a solution might be to use a bash modern synopsys to write autoconf macro
considering compatibility in a pragmatic way?!

however what are the other relavant reasons that do them suck?

>> autotools does not work on windows.
projects i've in mind are strictly for linux. 
for windows, of course, won't be a reasonable thought.

>> ~/tmp > for op in config setup install;do ruby setup.rb $op || sudo ruby 
setup.rb $op;done

this is the best solution for a developer but from the user point of view 
reading the setup.rb manual to know options and behaviour is a pure waste of 
time.

it can be unhappy to know after 5min that another ruby project he want to 
test uses gem.

so, imo, the relax of configure && make && sudo make install 
can help the spread of a software in unix env.  is it true?

the promblem is that many sys-adm are even to lazy to install an interpreter, 
in general when even valid people see something of new is a bit discouraged 
because it can be a source of problem or bugs.




-- 
>here are more things in heaven and earth,
horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.