have to say --enable-maintainer-mode Personally I agree with you, in theory, but I think it is too big of a change to make. As I understand it. GNU package authors have their source repos and have never had to say --enable-maintainer-mode before to get their Makefiles etc. rebuilt. I don't think that would be a welcome change.
Maintainers who want it can choose that (AM_MAINTAINER_MODE), but I don't think we should change the default. -k
