configure:3136: error: The installed version of autoconf does not work.
I don't get that error on GNU/Linux. But I don't think anything
system-dependent is going on, either. I installed autoconf 2.70:
$ autoconf --version
autoconf (GNU Autoconf) 2.70
And then I ran these commands:
tar xf automake-1.16.3.tar.xz
cd automake-1.16.3
./configure --prefix=/tmp/am
make
make install
And it all worked fine.
https://savannah.gnu.org/support/index.php?110397
I can't follow everything there, but for sure, as Zack says, autotest.m4
is not a configure script, so running autoconf on it doesn't make sense.
Zack's other answers also already provide the additional information
that I could think of.
If you have a reproducible recipe starting from the released tarballs,
let us know. --best, karl.
