Automake demands "Autoconf 2.65 or better" and yet I already have Autoconf 2.69 installed

Question

Right now I'm trying to build Automake on my Mac, and so far everything has been going swimmingly. I built Autoconf and m4 without any issues out of the packages (as opposed to git pulls). And then I get to Automake, and that's where things fall apart:

    checking whether autoconf is installed... yes
    checking whether autoconf works... yes
    checking whether autoconf is recent enough... no
    configure: error: Autoconf 2.65 or better is required.

The issue persists if I build and install autoconf 2.68. Is there some sort of trick I'm missing on this one?

Answer 1

The make file is detecting an older version of Autoconf in your $PATH. Take a look at this post in Sebastien's blog, especially the part that tells you to add your new Autoconf bin dir to the $PATH before building Automake. If you want to follow "standard" OSX folder structure convention, install Autoconf in /usr/local.

Allow me to shamelessly copy Daniel Farrelly version of Sebastien's script.

export build=~/devtools # or wherever you'd like to build
mkdir -p $build

##
# Autoconf
# http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/autoconf

cd $build
curl -OL http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/autoconf/autoconf-2.69.tar.gz
tar xzf autoconf-2.69.tar.gz
cd autoconf-2.69
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install
export PATH=/usr/local/bin

##
# Automake
# http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/automake

cd $build
curl -OL http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/automake/automake-1.13.2.tar.gz
tar xzf automake-1.13.2.tar.gz
cd automake-1.13.2
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install