[acerbix]

I am entirely too grumpy :-)  All I want is a decent config file so  can config, make and sometimes make install (altho I usually do that manually if possible).

I will refrain from burning your ears off with my feelings about all this ... "stuff" :-)

I remember the good old days when the Makefile had all the flags you needed to edit, and make/make install  
Then came config.h - and then the configure scripts, and then autoconf/automake/autoxyz.../pkg-config/.. and the total mess things are right now. If you are not on linux, everything takes days to reverse-engineer, build and  test. 

I feel your pain.