On a platform where building Pd with autotools is just a matter of
hitting ./configure && make, the need for a 'self-replicating' binary
package seems to be obviated indeed. Frankly I didn't know it is so
easy, since INSTALL.txt for 0.48-0 still tells you to generate the
configure script. Will 0.48-1 be different in this respect?
Short form: I an be that easy, but the current pd source tarball does not included the generated configure script.
Long form:
It *should* be that easy but it requires the source release to include the generated configure script. This can be done on a developer machine using "make dist" which generates a distribution tarball (even with the version naming), ready to go. If configure and it's m4 stuff are included, then all the user needs is a shell and compiler chain to build the project. That's part of the whole point of autotools.
The reason I added the info about installing autoconf, etc was the currently pd's source tarball is a git archive (I believe) and not an autotools dist tarball, hence the extra steps to generate configure as it's not included. We removed the generated files from the git repo as they really don't nee to be there as they can be generated like the automaker-generated makefiles.
If the intention is to leave out sources from future binary
distributions for all platforms, would it be an idea to include a copy
of the API files in the old path (src) during a transition period, say
until the next major version?
Right. If the requirement is that the headers need to be in a "src" folder instead of "include", I can fix that no problem as it was just a cleanup detail I've not gotten around to fixing.