newby question: to use or not to use ?

[Joao Miguel Ferreira]

Hello all,

I'm a beginner new on this list searching for enlightnment on the usage
of Autoconf (and friends).

I've just arrived to a new project were we have to maintain (debug,
upgrade, new features, etc) a certain amount of software which must be
executed (mostlly dynamic loaded libraries .so) in several UNIX/Linux
systems (HP-UX, Solaris and Linux).... and also VMS and also MS.

The code is some kind of communications middleware in C/C++. From it we
build some shared libs which are loaded by our client's application
developers.

I've used Autoconf/Automake and Libtool before but it was a very short
(but good) experience on Linux only systems.



Questions:

1- should I go ahead and try to unify development/maintenance around the
GNU Autotools for the UNIX/Linux systems (what I have know is a src dir
and CVS with a bunch of platform specific Makefiles ?!?!)

2- what pitfalls could there be (ex: could the source code we have be
such a mess that it would stop me from continuing, along the way ?;
could something compiled with gcc not be compatible with client's
applications compiled with some specific compiler ?;)

3- Are the autotools/gcc 'smart enough' to cross-compile correctlly to
each of the targets; or maybe I should just do a ./configure in the
target system and in that case would configure find the native/local
C/CPP compilers correctlly

My feeling is that 'porting' to Autotools is good and will show profits
in the future, but my boss won't let me do it unless I find more
'measurable' advantages...

can anyone help me get the full picture here ? maybe point me to some
good readings on this ? maybe share previous experience in similar
situations ?

I appreciate it a lot.

Thank you all.

Joao