Portable mail archives?

[Simon]

I find that debugging failed checks with configure scripts from a
packager/user perspective hasn't been too bad so far, that's what the
config.log is therefore.  It goes without saying though that I only
learned how to use autoconf because I like automake.

As to your last point, it's not configure's fault that the maintainer
hard coded paths and didn't run make distcheck.  Autoconf could use a
starter guide or something, but when used properly, building anywhere
works fine.
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