> I've noticed that from building (amd64) using tde_packaging (from git) that the debian
> build does not appear to use cmake but instead uses autotools?. Very odd. Is that correct?

Hi Michael,
again, just to help your understanding, TDE has been partially migrated to cmake, but the migration is not completed yet and it's proceeding very slowly, due to the small size of the development team. So some of the modules are using cmake and some are still using autotools.
If you are willing to contribute to the cmake migration, you are welcome :D 

Cheers
  Michele