Can't configure automake 1.9.2

[Karl Schmitz]

Dear GNU Automake team,

Today, when I tried to configure a freshly unpacked automake-1.9.2 tarball
(so I'd
be able to generate the documentation in DVI format), the configure script
aborted
with the following (error) messages:

address@hidden:~/src/automake-1.9.2$ ./configure
checking build system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking for gawk... gawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
checking for perl... /usr/bin/perl
checking for tex... tex
checking whether autoconf is installed... yes
checking whether autoconf works... yes
checking whether autoconf is recent enough... no
configure: error: Autoconf 2.58 or better is required.

I consider this a severe bug. In my opinion, the configure script should
instead
assume that autoconf is missing (like it would have if autoconf hadn't been
installed at all!), because it isn't necessary to run autoconf in order to
configure
a package, isn't it?

Here's some information about my host system (running an up-to-date Debian
GNU/Linux
3.0r2):

address@hidden:~/src/automake-1.9.2$ uname -a
Linux skopsko 2.4.26-1woody.1 #1 Fre Mai 28 16:03:36 CEST 2004 i686 unknown
address@hidden:~/src/automake-1.9.2$ dpkg -l | egrep 'auto(conf|make|tool)'
ii  autoconf       2.53-2         automatic configure script builder
ii  autoconf2.13   2.13-43        automatic configure script builder
(obsolete
ii  automake       1.4-p4-1.1     A tool for generating GNU
Standards-complian
ii  autotools-dev  20020320.1     Update infrastructure for
config.{guess,sub}
ii  pkg-config     0.11.0-0.1     program and autoconf macro to gather
compile
address@hidden:~/src/automake-1.9.2$ autoconf --version
Autoconf version 2.13
address@hidden:~/src/automake-1.9.2$ autoconf2.13 --version
Autoconf version 2.13
address@hidden:~/src/automake-1.9.2$ autoconf2.50 --version
autoconf (GNU Autoconf) 2.53
Written by David J. MacKenzie and Akim Demaille.

Copyright 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
address@hidden:~/src/automake-1.9.2$ automake --version
automake (GNU automake) 1.4-p4

Copyright (C) 1999, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Written by Tom Tromey <address@hidden>

Kind regards,

Karl Schmitz

P.S. Maybe this bug report should be forwarded to the GNU Autoconf team. I
haven't
investigated yet which macro invocation is responsible for this, but it
might be
one supplied by GNU Autoconf.

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