help with porting libaec

Hello,

I'm trying to port something. WIP is attached.

When I grab the tar ball without 'configure', I have to generate it.
This fails as follows:

marco@foobar:.../archivers/libaec$ make configure
===> Building from scratch libaec-1.1.4
===> libaec-1.1.4 depends on: metaauto-* -> metaauto-1.0p4
===> libaec-1.1.4 depends on: autoconf-2.71 -> autoconf-2.71p0
===> libaec-1.1.4 depends on: automake->=1.16,<1.17 -> automake-1.16.5p0
===> libaec-1.1.4 depends on: libtool-* -> libtool-2.4.2p3
===> libaec-1.1.4 depends on: gmake-* -> gmake-4.4.1
===> libaec-1.1.4 depends on: groff->=1.21 -> groff-1.22.4p4
===> Checking files for libaec-1.1.4
`/usr/ports/distfiles/libaec-1.1.4.tar.gz' is up to date.
>> (SHA256) all files: OK
===> Extracting for libaec-1.1.4
===> Patching for libaec-1.1.4
===> Compiler link: clang -> env CCACHE_DIR=/home/pobj/.ccache ccache /usr/bin/clang
===> Compiler link: clang++ -> env CCACHE_DIR=/home/pobj/.ccache ccache /usr/bin/clang++
===> Compiler link: cc -> env CCACHE_DIR=/home/pobj/.ccache ccache /usr/bin/cc
===> Compiler link: c++ -> env CCACHE_DIR=/home/pobj/.ccache ccache /usr/bin/c++
===> Generating configure for libaec-1.1.4
/bin/sh: cd: /home/pobj/libaec-1.1.4/libaec-1.1.4 - No such file or directory
*** Error 1 in . (/usr/ports/infrastructure/mk/bsd.port.mk:2971 '_gen-finalize': @for d in /home/pobj/libaec-1.1.4/libaec-1.1.4; do cd $d; ...)
*** Error 2 in . (/usr/ports/infrastructure/mk/bsd.port.mk:3011 '/home/pobj/libaec-1.1.4/.gen_done': @cd /usr/ports/mystuff/archivers/libaec...)
*** Error 2 in /usr/ports/mystuff/archivers/libaec (/usr/ports/infrastructure/mk/bsd.port.mk:2712 'configure': @lock=libaec-1.1.4; export _...)
marco@foobar:.../archivers/libaec$ ls -l /home/pobj/libaec-1.1.4/
total 1
drwxr-xr-x 2 _pbuild _pbuild 512 Jul 3 16:45 bin
drwxr-xr-x 10 _pbuild _pbuild 512 Jun 12 13:06 libaec-v1.1.4-7204505af7d6635734fc12a38d6bd0a6253c9c6d


Apparently it extracts under the directory with that long name and not
$(DISTNAME). What went wrong?


There are also a libaec tarballs available with a generated configure
script, but the one from the main mirror has a URL that changes
unpredictable with new versions, as shown here:
https://gitlab.dkrz.de/k202009/libaec/-/issues/6#note_344239

When I use a tarball with generated files, libaec builds successfully.

Are there reasons (except for success in this case) for using a tarball
either with or without a configure script?

CMake is apparently the preferred method for libaec, but is there any
advantage there?

Marco