There are several references to a future release of Automake in libtool, that may not work with your own copy of Automake. Only releases of Automake after automake-1.1j work with libtool. You can find the latest Automake prerelease (warning: it may have bugs) at: Once Automake 1.2 is released, you should get it from your closest GNU mirror. ** If you get automake-1.1k, you'll need to apply the following patch before installing it: diff -u automake-1.1k/automake.in.orig automake-1.1k/automake.in --- automake-1.1k/automake.in.orig Sun Dec 8 04:03:10 1996 +++ automake-1.1k/automake.in Sun Dec 8 04:03:12 1996 @@ -4294,7 +4294,7 @@ { # Note that we explicitly set the mode, to avoid # lossage if the program name isn't what we expect. - $more_xform = 's/\@LIBTOOL\@/$(LIBTOOL) --mode=install/;'; + $more_xform = 's/\@LIBTOOL\@/\$(LIBTOOL) --mode=install/;'; } else {