Some relevant discussion/pointers to other notes on this sort of proposal can be found here: https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/sysadmin/AutoconfVa...

(The conclusion I distilled out of reading that at the time, I think, was that this is actually sort of happening, but slowly, and autoconf is likely to stick around for a while, if only as a compatibility layer during the transition.)