Separate builds for separate library components

How can I make stand-alone builds of the major components of HDF5? I would like to be able to split up and make stand-alone builds for the following. The purpose is improved management for external repositories, such as MacPorts, especially dependency management.

* Core C library, including HL library.
* Fortran API.
* C++ API.
* Java API.
* Manuals.
* Tools library.

I could imagine doing this with the existing Autotools and Cmake. For best results, I would need a way to turn off building the core library, while building any of the satellites. I don't see how to do that right now. Suggestions?