Splendid idea, looking forward to trying it out. One question, though. As far as I know, most autotools actually
. I think this means they don't really have to be "extutils" from the perl perspective. It has always surprised my that this gnu software isn't on CPAN - but I think you would have the right (under the gpl) to change that and to package your release with (some of) the autotools and achieve tighter integration than you have now.