upgrade to autoconf-2.53 and automake-1.5

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

I've got a patch that upgrades the required build system to
autoconf-2.53 and automake-1.5.  I have not committed this
patch, yet, but I plan to commit it soon.  I also plan
to commit this patch to the 1.8 branch, but I'd like
to hear feedback before I do it.

Note that this patch only changes autogen.sh; it doesn't
fix the configure.in script to upgrade it to autoconf-2.53-isms
so there are still abunch of warnings when you run autogen.

If anyone would like to test this patch before I commit it, please let
me know.

-derek

PS: What the patch does is run "foo --version", looks for the version
number, and compares that version number to the required version.  If
foo is not sufficient, it checks foo-<version>.  E.g., it will first
check 'autoconf' and then 'autoconf-2.53'.  This means you can still
build on RH7.3, provided you have the autoconf253 and automake15
packages installed.

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available