Christophe Fergeau (teuf) provided lots of fixes for the Autotools build in
https://github.com/metabrainz/libdiscid/pull/15

The main intent is to make the build system "more standard", rather than the unusual hacks we had.

He also advised to use a non-recursive Automake build, which would be more similar to what cmake is doing:
http://www.flameeyes.eu/autotools-mythbuster/automake/nonrecursive.html