Actually from what i can tell, th GNU Autotools, have some sort of
similiar
built-in support, using progrmes named auto{gen,conf}-wrapper, that
scan the
configure.ac and/or makefile.am, calling an old version or a new
version as
needed.
I have corrisponded privately with michi, and will point out, that my
config
seems nearly match his, and i get to the point where i can run
configure,
but it will not build for me (on cygwin, I assume this was just
tempory for
me, and have not tried more recently.)
But michi seems to still have this problem so FWIW:
He has:
AC 2.57-5mdk (old: 2.13-19mdk)
AM 1.7.6-1mdk (old: 1.4-23.p6.mdk)
I have:
AC 2.59 (old:2.13)
AM 1.7.9 (old:1.4-p6)