Hello Paul and Ralves, the change discussed here was triggered by problems with Solaris' make.
I agree that the Automake manual could mention this bad scenario, perhaps something like: ``Avoid files with names identical to shell builtins or basic commands; during a VPATH build, Solaris' @command{make} would then make unwanted replacements in the commands text, yielding very puzzling results. For example, no check script should be named @command{test}.'' OTOH, the recommendation in doc/install.texi could be perhaps more grained. The problem is not that gmake is the only one working, the problem is that Solaris' make is extremely evil. (Do I understand correctly that BSD make is not rewriting the commands?) The wording could be along this: ``The VPATH build should generally work with all make implementations. Getting this right is tremendously tricky, though: in particular, the misfeatures of Solaris' @command{make} cause biggest troubles. On the other hand, the most reliable (and most tested) is GNU make---try it if the VPATH build is not behaving well.'' I apologize that I do not submit this in the form of a patch; I'm sure these paragraphs will have to undergo some editorial work before install, anyway. Though I regret the confusion, I'm glad that Ralf pointed out the problem. Have a nice day, Stepan Kasal