GNU's build system.
CMake is likely more portable. But if you ever touch a GNU project, better learn this.
KDE is a notable project that dumped it for CMake in KDE 4: https://lwn.net/Articles/188693/
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1015700/autotools-library-and-object-file-output-control
cd
into the desired directory, and ../configure
from there.
Pass an extra one at make
time: