You wonder why anybody would use itchconfig instead of the well-known, established GNU autoconf/automake tools? - Here are some of the main differences:

• The generated files are much smaller. For example, a minimal configure script (generated from AC_INIT/AC_OUTPUT resp. IC_BEGIN/IC_END) has about 50 KB with autoconf and only about 7 KB with itchconfig. (Most of the 7 KB are inevitable compatibility stuff and texts like the output for the command-line options "--version" and "--help".) A configure script for the web browser retawq has about 180 KB (plus the size of Makefile.in etc.) with autoconf and less than 40 KB with itchconfig.
• The number of involved files is drastically reduced. For example, the GNU tools operate on things like Makefile.am, Makefile.in, aclocal.m4, configure.in, depcomp, install-sh and mkinstalldirs, which is quite a lot; itchconfig just needs a configure.base file.
• The itchconfig tools are faster and much smaller.
• itchconfig will be more flexible; currently, it isn't yet as powerful and is mostly intended for small software packages - this project is quite young. ;-) Right now, we concentrate on support for small C packages.