[bug-gnulib] Problems with distributing regex.c again, what am I (still) doing wrong?

[James Youngman]

My workaround for the problems findutils has with distributing
gnulib's regex.c file hit a speedbump today.  I think I have solved
the immediate problem, but I am stil left with an ugly hack in the
top-level Makefile.am.  This implies to me that I haven't fully
understood the real nature of the problem.

Could somebody who knows more about how gnulib interacts with Automake
please take a look at the hack (Makefile rule 'jy-regex-fix') in the
top-level Makefile.am in the findutils-4.2.18 distribution (this is
the current release on ftp.gnu.org) and try to figure out how I'm
using gnulib or Automake wrongly and what I should be doing instead?

I'm sure I shouldn't have to have a hack in there that manually copies
the regex.c file, and whose actual behaviour needs to be different for
different versions of Automake, surely?  That's what I seem to have to
do at the moment.

I realise that this is a somewhat vague request, but I have tried
several different ways of solving this problem, all without success.
For background info (including links to descriptions of previous
attempts to solve the problem which were wrong for some reason or
another) please also see
http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?func=detailitem&item_id=12064

Thanks in advance for any help (or, even, hints).
James.