it looks like the tree currently requires automake 1.11.1.  why ?
are any distros providing only that version ?  the top level 
README-maintainer-mode actually states "1.11" and not "1.11.1".

1.11.6 has been out for almost 3 years now, and among the various fixes,
it includes a security fix related to distcheck.  for that reason, it's
actually hard to acquire an older 1.11.x version, not to mention it's a 
bad idea.
-mike