Improved build System

[Mike Duigou]

It's nice to see progress on replacing the old build infrastructure. Certainly long, long overdue. 

Some questions:

Is it intended long term that the autoconf result will always be checked in?

Have you considered using an autogen.sh aka buildconf (http://buildconf.brlcad.org/) based bootstrap? Might make things a little simpler.

I'm also surprised at the size of the configure.ac file and nervous about how big it will get once all configs are supported. Can any of the library detection be simplified into a common macro? Do we expect that the ant detection and --with-ant will be necessary?

Hopefully distaste for autotools won't be held against me. :-)

Mike