As a follow-up to my earlier "fixed-upstream" tag based on the upstream maintainer's belief, I tested my package with automake 1.16.1 (the latest upstream version). It did fix this bug that automake 1.15 manifested in my case.
I was able to get around the bug in automake 1.15, so it does not affect me at this moment. I had to re-do how I implemented "make check" targets to circumvent it (long story that would involve poring over generated Makefiles). But I it would be nice if automake 1.16.x made it into buster--the bug was quite a stumbling block for me when I ran into it. Thanks, Paul Hardy
