Standard makefiles aim to be a viable alternative to autotools (autoconf + automake + libtool). Unlike autotools the learning curve is simply flat. Many otherwise configurable things are left as a default matching good conventions. The whole suite is very simple to understand, modify and does not litter source directories with auto-generated files. While the feature set of standard makefiles is far smaller they already work better in some circumstances, such as cross-compilation and non-GNU-Linux development.