AC_PREREQ in aclocal.m4

[Bill Wendling]

Hi all,

I'm sorry if this question has been asked and answered before, but when I
generate the aclocal.m4 file (using aclocal version 1.7.6), it puts the
line:

    AC_PREREQ([2.54])

as the first macro.

This is slightly inconvenient as I then can't use the generated Makefiles
on a system which doesn't have autoconf 2.54 or greater installed:

cd ../../hdf4 && /bin/sh /mnt/sdt/wendling/hdf4/bin/missing --run
aclocal-1.7
/mnt/sdt/wendling/hdf4/bin/missing: aclocal-1.7: command not found
WARNING: `aclocal-1.7' is missing on your system.  You should only need it if
         you modified `acinclude.m4' or `configure.ac'.  You might want
         to install the `Automake' and `Perl' packages.  Grab them from
         any GNU archive site.
cd ../../hdf4 && \
  /bin/sh /mnt/sdt/wendling/hdf4/bin/missing --run automake-1.7 --foreign
Makefile
/mnt/sdt/wendling/hdf4/bin/missing: automake-1.7: command not found
WARNING: `automake-1.7' is missing on your system.  You should only need it if
         you modified `Makefile.am', `acinclude.m4' or `configure.ac'.
         You might want to install the `Automake' and `Perl' packages.
         Grab them from any GNU archive site.
cd ../../hdf4 && /bin/sh /mnt/sdt/wendling/hdf4/bin/missing --run autoconf
aclocal.m4:39: error: Autoconf version 2.54 or higher is required
aclocal.m4:39: the top level
make: *** [../../hdf4/configure] Error 1

Now, like the warning says, this might be because the "configure.ac" file
had a new datestamp or something, but normally what happens is:

    aclocal
    automake --foreign
    autoconf
    configure ...
    make

So, I'm not sure what the problem would be or why it's requiring
autoconf. Is there something I can do which I'm not doing or some flag I
can set to have it not try to rerun autoconf for me?

Thanks.

P.S. I'm not on this list, so please CC me on all responses. Thank you.

-- 
|| Bill Wendling            "Real Programmers have a Snoopy Calendar
|| address@hidden    of '69 hanging on their wall"
|| Coding Simian                       -- Toon Moene