Autoconf is a nice and useful tool. I like it. It solves problems.

#ifdef ALLOW_RANT

Automake, OTOH, is a crapball of infinite radius. It adds immense amounts of bloat to your otherwise simple makesystem. It wouldn't be such a problem if it simply worked, but that's not the case. And since RPM doesn't provide a diversion mechanism, I'll have to circumvent this annoyance in a less elegant way. To hell with "GNU Standards-compliant Makefiles", I want packages I can actually build!

Libtool is a different story. It's conceptually interesting, but the way it was implemented is braindead. Calling it stupid is an insult to stupid things.

#else

I suspect the autoconf 2.13->2.5x transition have some minor flaws that break some ill-behaved packages, but that's a minor issue. Life is beautiful.

#endif /* ALLOW_RANT */