FYI, I've just pushed the following fix.
I share blame, as the reviewer.
I did not test Friday's change until today.
>From a765077b04a89bffa2a6095c7988fb9a70857d7f Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Jim Meyering <meyer...@redhat.com>
Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2011 21:24:06 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] GNUmakefile: reenable "make syntax-check" for most projects
Since Friday's commit 05e2d798, "maint.mk: don't maintain a second
build-aux variable", "syntax-check" would do nothing but succeed with
the "No version control files detected..." diagnostic (unless you
happened to override _build-aux via cfg.mk).
* top/GNUmakefile (_autoreconf, _build-aux): Move default definitions
to precede inclusion of maint.mk. Otherwise, these variables would
be used undefined in any project that does not override the default.
---
ChangeLog | 11 +++++++++++
top/GNUmakefile | 3 ++-
2 files changed, 13 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index 30cc2af..99e20ff 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,14 @@
+2011-10-30 Jim Meyering <meyer...@redhat.com>
+
+ GNUmakefile: reenable "make syntax-check" for most projects
+ Since Friday's commit 05e2d798, "maint.mk: don't maintain a second
+ build-aux variable", "syntax-check" would do nothing but succeed with
+ the "No version control files detected..." diagnostic (unless you
+ happened to override _build-aux via cfg.mk).
+ * top/GNUmakefile (_autoreconf, _build-aux): Move default definitions
+ to precede inclusion of maint.mk. Otherwise, these variables would
+ be used undefined in any project that does not override the default.
+
2011-10-29 Dmitry V. Levin <l...@altlinux.org>
gitlog-to-changelog: treat a message with only blank lines as empty.
diff --git a/top/GNUmakefile b/top/GNUmakefile
index 6e00ec8..ca88b6b 100644
--- a/top/GNUmakefile
+++ b/top/GNUmakefile
@@ -45,12 +45,13 @@ include Makefile
# Some projects override e.g., _autoreconf here.
-include $(srcdir)/cfg.mk
-include $(srcdir)/maint.mk
# Allow cfg.mk to override these.
_build-aux ?= build-aux
_autoreconf ?= autoreconf -v
+include $(srcdir)/maint.mk
+
# Ensure that $(VERSION) is up to date for dist-related targets, but not
# for others: rerunning autoreconf and recompiling everything isn't cheap.
_have-git-version-gen := \
--
1.7.7.1.476.g9890
