[servilio]

That's a very apple to oranges comparison, wouldn't you agree?

GNU autotools assists in making source code packages portable accross Unix-like systems, while make is for build automation and has fine-level dependencies (inter-files).

Nix is a package manager, and though is can build your software for you transparently, it is not tied to and specific software configurationand building toolset, can manage buildtime and runtime dependencies (including downloading the sources), caching build results transparently, etc.