configure problem - ./configure succeeds locally but not remotely

[Skip Montanaro]

(please cc me on any replies, thx...)

I'm a novice user of the autoconf/libtool/automake trio and am having
trouble figuring out why my configure script works on my home machine but
not elsewhere.

I recently began hosting a small project on SF and decided to use the GNU
tools to manage the configuration and build process.  I am running

    autoconf (GNU Autoconf) 2.52
    automake (GNU automake) 1.5
    ltmain.sh (GNU libtool) 1.4.2 (1.922.2.53 2001/09/11 03:18:52)

Everything seems to work fine on my home machine (Mandrake 8.1, gcc 2.96).
I have the following config-related files checked into the repository.

    -rw-rw-r--    1 skip     skip       129153 Apr  9 12:02 aclocal.m4
    -rw-rw-r--    1 skip     skip           32 Apr  9 12:02 AUTHORS
    -rw-rw-r--    1 skip     skip            0 Apr  9 12:02 ChangeLog
    -rwxrwxr-x    1 skip     skip        39311 Apr  9 12:02 config.guess
    -rw-rw-r--    1 skip     skip         2438 Apr  9 12:02 config.h.in
    -rwxrwxr-x    1 skip     skip        27594 Apr  9 12:02 config.sub
    -rwxrwxr-x    1 skip     skip       298700 Apr  9 12:09 configure
    -rw-rw-r--    1 skip     skip         1610 Apr  9 12:02 configure.in
    -rw-rw-r--    1 skip     skip        26430 Apr  9 13:40 COPYING
    -rwxrwxr-x    1 skip     skip        12117 Apr  9 12:02 depcomp
    -rw-rw-r--    1 skip     skip         7831 Apr  9 12:02 INSTALL
    -rwxrwxr-x    1 skip     skip         5598 Apr  9 12:02 install-sh
    -rw-rw-r--    1 skip     skip       138312 Apr  9 12:02 ltmain.sh
    -rw-rw-r--    1 skip     skip           27 Apr  9 12:02 Makefile.am
    -rw-rw-r--    1 skip     skip        13080 Apr  9 12:09 Makefile.in
    -rwxrwxr-x    1 skip     skip         8857 Apr  9 12:02 missing
    -rwxrwxr-x    1 skip     skip          731 Apr  9 12:02 mkinstalldirs
    -rw-rw-r--    1 skip     skip            0 Apr  9 12:02 NEWS
    -rw-rw-r--    1 skip     skip            0 Apr  9 12:02 README
    -rw-rw-r--    1 skip     skip           10 Apr  9 12:02 stamp-h.in

There are also three subdirectories, each with Makefile.am and Makefile.in,
and a couple C source files.

I can start from a fresh CVS checkout and run configure with no problem.  It
also works to run "make dist-all", unpack the resulting tarfile in another
directory and run configure.

What I can't do is "cvs up" on another machine and successfully run
"./configure".  I can unpack the dist tar file on the other machine and
configure more-or-less works, but it still has some problems (like not
alerting me to the problem.)  On this particular other machine (running
Debian 2.2, gcc 2.95.2, and identical versions of the above three tools), I
get this for configure output:

    % cvs up
    cvs server: Updating .
    cvs server: Updating python
    cvs server: Updating src
    cvs server: Updating test
    % ./configure
    checking for a BSD compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
    checking whether build environment is sane... yes
    checking for mawk... mawk
    checking whether make sets ${MAKE}... yes
    checking for g++... g++
    checking for C++ compiler default output... a.out
    ... bunch of normal msgs elided ...
    checking if gcc static flag -static works... yes
    checking if gcc supports -c -o file.o... ./configure: cd: conftest: Not a 
directory
    rm: cannot remove `conftest': Input/output error
    rmdir: conftest: No such file or directory
    yes
    checking if gcc supports -c -o file.lo... 
    checking if gcc supports -fno-rtti -fno-exceptions... no
    checking whether the linker (/usr/bin/ld) supports shared libraries... yes
    ... bunch more normal msgs elided ...
    checking for rmdir... yes
    checking for strdup... yes
    configure: creating ./config.status
    config.status: creating Makefile
    config.status: error: cannot find input file: Makefile.in
    address@hidden:~/src/alf$ 

When I look at config.log in the region of the error output I see

    configure:5495: checking if gcc supports -c -o file.lo
    configure:5519: gcc -c -g -O2 -c -o conftest.lo  conftest.c >&5
    configure:5507: confdefs.h: No such file or directory
    configure:5522: $? = 1
    configure: failed program was:
    #line 5507 "configure"
    #include "confdefs.h"

    int
    main ()
    {
    int some_variable = 0;
      ;
      return 0;
    }
    configure:5549: result: no

If I create conftest.c manually, it compiles fine.  (There is a confdefs.h
file there.)  I inserted an "echo `pwd`" in the configure script just before
the cat command that creates conftest.c and discovered the current working
directory is up a level from the directory containing the configure script.
This suggests to me there is a problem with what are supposed to be paired
cd commands.  Does any of this ring a bell with people on this list?

Thanks,

-- 
Skip Montanaro (address@hidden - http://www.mojam.com/)