[...]
| This works fine. But unfortunately the autoconf/automake process
| creates a lot of output files (like the autom4te.cache folder etc.)
| which I don't want to have in my project root directory. It looks
| really ugly.
Most of the auxiliary scripts can be relocated with a proper
invocation of AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR from your configure.ac. (This
macro is documented in the Autoconf manual.)
The Autoconf manual also explains how you can customize autom4te
(using autom4te.cfg) so that it puts its cache elsewhere (using
--cache=elsewhere).
It will still remain a few files at the top-level, like
./configure{,.ac}, aclocal.m4 and Makefile.{in,am}, but I'm
afraid you'll have to live with them. Uniformity matters most
than personal taste.
[...]
--
Alexandre Duret-Lutz
