Guess the macro never really worked? AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR is used in almost every package. For example, Texinfo's configure.ac starts as below. As the comment there says, maybe you were using it after AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------- AC_INIT([GNU Texinfo], [6.7dev], [bug-texi...@gnu.org]) dnl Must come before AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE. AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR([build-aux]) dnl tar-ustar because we have long filenames for some test files. dnl parallel-tests as recommended by stefano. AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE([1.14 info-in-builddir parallel-tests readme-alpha tar-ustar]) # Where to generate output; srcdir location. AC_CONFIG_HEADERS([config.h:config.in])dnl Keep filename to 8.3 for MS-DOS. AC_CONFIG_SRCDIR([info/info.c]) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Oddly, I cannot find that necessary ordering mentioned in the documentation. I'm not 100% sure it's always required, either. I'll have to look into that. --thanks, karl.