autotools support for msvc (was: useful bug reports)

[Rob Byrne]

Hi Ralf,

> Unfortunately, I haven't gotten around to final testing and applying all
> of his patches.  I can't promise when I'll be able to do that, but I
> certainly would like to see it applied; all I definitely want to avoid
> is any regressions for other systems (non-MSVC w32, or non-w32).  Nobody
> else has stepped in either to do it.  Free time is limited.
Would it be possible in the interim to update the automake or autotools 
manual to be clear that it does not work for native windows compilers 
and linkers (cl.exe and link.exe etc) ?
A clear statement like that would have saved me a fait bit of time.   
One thing for example that is confusing (perhaps this is not a comment 
for automake specifically) is that the GnuWin32 page has a title like 
"LibTool for Windows"...when you see something like that, and you're new 
to Windows porting, you easily misinterpret it.  What it really means is 
something like "LibTool for gcc on Windows".  Perhaps that's obvious to 
autotools experts but it wasn't to me...so I passed several educational 
though finally fruitless hours :-)...

thanks for all your work on these tools,
Rob.