I approve of the concept, but I don't think this isn't the answer.
For a start, it says if you want to install into non-standard directories, or enable/disable options, you need to "edit your makefile". That isn't going to work for distributions, and I don't want to go to telling people to edit the makefile to change options on my program.
Also, in my experience most autotools scripts do something, maybe dealing with inconsistent linker flags on mac vs linux, or enabling/disabling some debug option, or saying where to find some library (and optionally allowing building without said library).
Coming up with some very simple format for configure scripts which are easy to read, and which do some simple search+replace substitution on a Makefile seems very sensible, and would get rid of awful autotools, is a great goal however.
For a start, it says if you want to install into non-standard directories, or enable/disable options, you need to "edit your makefile". That isn't going to work for distributions, and I don't want to go to telling people to edit the makefile to change options on my program.
Also, in my experience most autotools scripts do something, maybe dealing with inconsistent linker flags on mac vs linux, or enabling/disabling some debug option, or saying where to find some library (and optionally allowing building without said library).
Coming up with some very simple format for configure scripts which are easy to read, and which do some simple search+replace substitution on a Makefile seems very sensible, and would get rid of awful autotools, is a great goal however.