Managing 'make' for Large Projects

bvmcg asks: "About every large project I look at has a different idea of the best way of managing its make process. One make file per directory, per target binary, or one overall. Options in a seperate config file or in the make file itself. On and on. Which project would you look at for the "ideal" example of make structure? Which one would the community do well to mimic when creating new projects? What key features do you like to see? Why?" We are almost, but not quite at the point where installing any packages from source is a 3 step process: "./configure; make; make install". Would improving the way we construct our "Makefiles" make this any easier?