automake 1.9.6 build failure

[Mike Owens]

I am maintaining my copy of automake in a subversion vendor branch. I
have encountered a problem that is very difficult for me to diagnose.
The copy in subversion will not build on Solaris. The tarball will.
And there seems to be no discernible difference between the two
versions with respect to files. If I compare the version I have from
Subversion from the stock automake-1.9.6 tarball, they are identical
from a diff standpoint and md5sums all checkout. The only difference I
can find are the permissions on two files:

automake/m4/amversion.m4:

-rw-r--r-- 1 root other 872 Feb  1 09:04 automake/m4/amversion.m4
-r--r--r-- 1 root other 872 Jul 10  2005 automake-1.9.6/m4/amversion.m4

automake/lib/config.guess:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root other 43K Feb  1 09:04 automake/lib/config.guess
-rwxr-xr-- 1 root other 43K Jul 10  2005 automake-1.9.6/lib/config.guess

All other files are identical. Both versions configure identically,
and have identical config.log files. The version taken from subversion
fails to build with the following error:

--------------------------------->
address@hidden automake $ ./configure
checking build system type... i386-pc-solaris2.10
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /opt/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking for gawk... no
checking for mawk... no
checking for nawk... nawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
checking for perl... /opt/bin/perl
checking for tex... no
checking whether autoconf is installed... yes
checking whether autoconf works... yes
checking whether autoconf is recent enough... yes
checking whether ln works... yes
checking for grep that handles long lines and -e... /usr/sfw/bin/ggrep
checking for egrep... /usr/sfw/bin/ggrep -E
checking for fgrep... /usr/sfw/bin/ggrep -F
configure: creating ./config.status
config.status: creating Makefile
config.status: creating doc/Makefile
config.status: creating lib/Automake/Makefile
config.status: creating lib/Automake/tests/Makefile
config.status: creating lib/Makefile
config.status: creating lib/am/Makefile
config.status: creating m4/Makefile
config.status: creating tests/Makefile
config.status: creating tests/defs
config.status: creating tests/aclocal-1.9
config.status: creating tests/automake-1.9

address@hidden automake $ make
 cd . && perllibdir=/home/owensmk/data/code/vendor/ports/automake"/lib:./lib"
/home/owensmk/data/code/vendor/ports/automake/automake --libdir=lib
--gnu
/bin/bash: /home/owensmk/data/code/vendor/ports/automake/automake: No
such file or directory
make: *** [Makefile.in] Error 1

<---------------------------------

I noticed that the automake file is not created, nor are other files
in lib/Automake, such as Config.pm.

This problem does not occur on Linux -- the subversion checkout builds fine.

So, to recap, there seems to be no difference between the contents of
the tarball or the version taken from subversion, yet the latter will
not build on Solaris, but will build on Linux. The tarball builds fine
everywhere.

Can someone please give me some direction on how to figure out what's
going on, or not working? What tests should I run? It would seem that
subversion has changed something in its copy, I just can't figure out
what.

-- Mike