On: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar (2012)

[astrange]

To compare with php (nearest autoconf I've got on hand):

    # wc -l ac* configure.in configure
        3033 acinclude.m4
        9398 aclocal.m4
        1682 configure.in
      117433 configure
      131546 total

Most of libav's configure script is dependency trees for all the codecs flags you can turn on/off, so it's quite compact without it. x264 reuses it at 1500 lines:

http://git.videolan.org/?p=x264.git;a=blob;f=configure;h=9d1...

Apparently the bash requirement isn't too bad since it works on Windows and Plan 9.