Replace autotools with meson?

[rieder]

Autotools is not ideal, and we have (had) quite a few problems dealing with finding the right dependencies/prerequisites (with numerous bugs still open).

Perhaps we can replace it with meson (e.g. https://mesonbuild.com/Porting-from-autotools.html), which seems to be a more modern / faster / reliable replacement option. I'd like to test if this could work and if we would benefit from this.

[rieder]

(we may also consider other options of course)