autotools cookbook needed

[John Calcote]

You know, I've recently finished reading the manuals for m4, libtool,
autoconf, and automake. After 1000 pages of reading, I was frustrated to
walk away knowing very little more than I started with. I believe this
is primarily due to the lack of examples and background context in the
explanations presented in these manuals (m4 and libtool manuals were
quite good, BTW - only the autotools manuals left much to be desired). 
 
I suggest we start a wiki page where people can post cookbook
information - detailed examples of how to do common things. A good
starting point would be FAQ and mailing list archives. The most
frequently asked questions would be answered first.
 
For example:
 
1. How to support debug build options, including symbols with no
optimizations, specific debug constructs, like debug memory, etc.
 
2. How to support library, program, header and function checks only
when specific options are enabled.
 
3. How to support specific tool optimization flags for fine tuning -
those not handled by the existing macros.
 
This is just the top three on my mind right now - these questions are
posed all the time on the mailing list. It would be nice if some of
these were answered in a cookbook fashion on a wiki page that could be
edited - then others could add their triumphs to the pages as well.
 
John