Sorry to be a little offtopic, but do you have any pointers for where to learn this kind of knowledge (more "best practices" than "getting started") for autoconf et al? I just started using them and I am sure many of your criticisms would apply to my code; I'd like to do better... Thanks.
In case anyone wants to know, this is my go-to recommendation for "getting started": http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~adl/autotools.html . Extremely thorough, and shows how all the different pieces work together. I'd read it anyway, even though you've got started. It's very, very good.
My opinion is that many people hate autotools because they don't understand them. It was designed to handle just about any crazy build scenario you can throw at it -- of course it going to be a little complex.
I started by spending a few hours forcing myself to read the following. It explains how autotools works and (importantly) why.
It is critical to understand what the autotools are actually doing before you just go and copy'n'paste somebody else's configure.ac and/or Makefile.am.
When you are ready to get your feet wet, here is a really good quick summary from the GNOME project:
Once you understand what is going on, finding specifics in the GNU manuals (and being able to interpret them) is much easier. Yes, you should understand how m4 works (it's not rocket science).
