Pretty wild statement, especially considering the existance of the Cygwin
Net Release. As far as I am aware, all packages contained in it are built
using an autoconf-based ./configure script. Check out http://cygwin.com/.
They use their own customized install agent (http://cygwin.com/setup.exe)
for binary releases, which are downloaded as Slackware-style tarballs, and
standard source tarballs that are patched when need be for source
installs.
If we are all honest with ourselves, autoconf on Windows and the whole cygwin
project is really just a moderately successful attempt to port applications
designed for, and written for, UNIX to Windows without having to completely
rewrite the applications for Windows.
When I see Norton SystemWorks or McAfee SpamKiller using cygwin, then I'll
consider cygwin a viable development platform for Windows. Until then, it's
just a port.