options and automake version

[Jason Kraftcheck]

I would like to enable some of the options new to version 1.11 of automake
(color-tests, silent-rules, & parallel-tests.)  However, many of the people
I work with are still using version 1.10.  I had hoped that 1.10 would just
ignore unrecognized options, as the options I wanted to add are not
essential to the build process.  Unfortunately, automake fails when it
encounters unrecognized options.  Is there some trick I could use to
conditionally add the options if they are supported?

thanks,

 - jason kraftcheck