build and configuration system

We already talked about what build system to use for the rewrite, but we 
did not come to any conclusion so far.
Thus I just want to throw in a "feature-wishlist" to restart the discussion.

  1) it should be possible to develop under linux, windows and macos x
     It would be great if visual studio project files could be
     automatically generated

  2) we need some kind of configuration tool, at least for linux, to
     check for libraries and posix oddities

  3) it should be simple and fast


Our current dual appoach (autoconf/automake + visual studio 6 project 
files) gives us (2) (and possibly (1), don't know about macos x).
It definitely does not fulfill (3).

With bjam we do not have (2), and (1) is uncertain.

Suggestions I can remember so far:

    * combine bjam with some configuration tool (autoconf?)
    * qmake with autoconf
    * plain make
    * ???

One further suggestion:

    * do it yourself: we specify a simple format that suits our needs and
      create automake/autoconf and visual studio project files from that
      with a script.

      This has the advantage that it can be extended to produce different
      formats (bjam, some other IDE on macos x, ...) when the need
      arrives.
      But we would have to be careful not to put too much work into this,
      because I see no sense in developing another full blown build
      system from scratch.


Regards,

Georg