Back on topic. Somewhat.
Further reading for the layman,
Autotools: a practitioner's guide to Autoconf, Automake and Libtool
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/...tomake_libtool
And the Authors blog for more Autotool details
http://jcalcote.wordpress.com/tag/autotools/
Using this knowledge in the real world
A helpful guide to realworld buildoot (it's a google doc)