It occurs to me we might avoid issues along these lines by having our bootstrap script invoke libtoolize before autoreconf. Does that sound wise to the two of you?
I tried this approach and it didn't help. libtoolize seems to be doing the right thing, but I still see automake decide it't not using libtool.
hart@pogo> libtoolize
libtoolize: putting auxiliary files in AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR, `sntp/libevent/build-aux'.
libtoolize: linking file `sntp/libevent/build-aux/ltmain.sh'
libtoolize: putting macros in AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIR, `sntp/m4'.
libtoolize: linking file `sntp/m4/libtool.m4'
libtoolize: linking file `sntp/m4/ltoptions.m4'
libtoolize: linking file `sntp/m4/ltsugar.m4'
libtoolize: linking file `sntp/m4/ltversion.m4'
libtoolize: linking file `sntp/m4/lt~obsolete.m4'
This should be reproducible the same way as earlier comments in this bug, just adding a libtoolize invocation before ./bootstrap