[SAI_Peregrinus]

Autotools started out much smaller and more reasonable. But they have a strong backwards compatibility system, and never seem to remove checks even when they're for long-obsolete systems. Someone might want to build modern tools for their IBM PC/AT! Better keep a check in every build of every program for all time! So the checks accumulate, without end, and the hacks to get the whole thing to keep running on every target accumulate, and it becomes an indecipherable mess.

[kardos]

Could the checks be binned into some categories or time strata, such that obsolete ones could be dropped. Eg, we could keep them all there under a --exhaustive flag for those 6 or 7 people who are really attached to their computer that they got in the 90s. But then add some more options like --fast or --cutoff=2015 to pare down the checks to what is relevant today