Basically all of the decisions are based on decades of trying to support ever more features, backwards compatibility, many different hackers trying to keep it working for their own projects / companies, etc.
It is possible to use autotools nowadays without losing your mind. There is a "safe" path where things just work. I prefer it to CMake, but both are unwieldy beasts.
https://www.amazon.com/Autotools-Practioners-Autoconf-Automa...
Basically all of the decisions are based on decades of trying to support ever more features, backwards compatibility, many different hackers trying to keep it working for their own projects / companies, etc.
It is possible to use autotools nowadays without losing your mind. There is a "safe" path where things just work. I prefer it to CMake, but both are unwieldy beasts.