diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index a9271b37..4bfbb895 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -1,5 +1,8 @@
 2004-01-16  Gary V. Vaughan  <gary@gnu.org>
 
+	* configure.ac (AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE): Require 1.8 for bootstrap, or
+	else aclocal.m4 is huge, and m4 directory is not distributed.
+
 	* configure.ac (AC_CONFIG_HEADERS): Create config.h in
 	$top_srcdir.
 	* m4/ltdl.m4 (AC_LIB_LTDL): Run AC_CONFIG_HEADERS for the user if
diff --git a/configure.ac b/configure.ac
index 619f9b51..34775c01 100644
--- a/configure.ac
+++ b/configure.ac
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 ## Process this file with autoconf to create configure. -*- autoconf -*-
-# Copyright (C) 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+# Copyright (C) 2001, 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
 #
 # This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
 # it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
@@ -110,7 +110,7 @@ AC_SUBST([TIMESTAMP])
 
 dnl These are bootstrap requirements, once built, libtool may work with
 dnl much older releases of autoconf and automake.  See release notes.
-AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE([1.7 gnits])
+AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE([1.8 gnits]) ## We use auto-m4_including
 
 
 ## ------------------------------- ##