make check is moaning

[Wm...]

Query: should

make check

in the sequence

make
make doc
make check
make install

be expected to work?

===

Background: I'm trying to work out why the guile test scripts don't work

Why: because if neither of the guile or python methods work then our 
supposed access methods are fucked.  Someone should be able to make one 
or both of them work in one or more environments.

Possible issues:

a) automake version
b) my understanding of guile and scheme

===

a) automake:

I've gone backwards and forwards on this
I think I've read all of the discussions
I haven't been able to reach a conclusion about which version is 
expected to work.

***
does anyone know a version of automake that is known to work cleanly 
with a particular iteration of gnc?
all I want is the obvious sequence so if anyone can say
gnc 2.n.n and automake 1.n played happy for me
that would be great
I think we are down to personal experience in making sense of this
***

I've tried going backwards in automake versions, that was worse for me. 
I've settled for
automake-1.14
(the most recent and verbose in my standard OS offering) for now because 
I can live with the warnings and I'm the sort of person that prefers to 
know what is and isn't working and the spurious stuff is easily ignored.

For ref:
uname -a
Linux Lubuntu64 3.16.0-55-generic #74~14.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Tue Nov 17 
10:15:59 UTC 2015 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

is the 64bit a possible issue?  I don't think it should be but I'm 
running out of things to guess about.

P.S. I'm building under Win as we speak in order to answer the same 
basic question.

-- 
Wm...