how to develop new target-specific library - autoconf?

["Gary Funck" <gary at Intrepid dot Com>]

(I posted this query to gcc-help, but perhaps it is more germane here.
Thanks - Gary)

Hello,

I'm working with GCC 2.95.2 sources, but I'd guess that my question would
still apply to version 3.0 as well.  We're adding a language dialect to C,
for parallel processing, called UPC.  We need to build a UPC runtime
library, in much the same fashion as libobjc (for Objective C); the runtime
library is
target-specific.

I modelled the Makefile.in and config.in files from the libobjc
implementation. Things appear to be working now, but one thing surprised me:
I had to manually run autoconf in the libupc directory, asking it to create
a "configure" script, which in turn built the local Makefile, and took care
of some other issues, I suppose.

My question: in general, does a GCC developer need to manually invoke
autoconf, when developing a new target-specific library? Or, is there a step
missing in some other config file, or Makefile that would've built
"configure" automatically in the top-level library directory?