Created attachment 4788 [details] [review]
override the automake (et al.) version in autogen.sh

OK, but can you please say why this would be necessary or helpful.

For example, to test the robustness of the build system when using different
autotools versions (which often tend to be incompatible in surprising ways).

I'm not convinced that that's a useful thing to do, because it's only an issue
when building from cvs. Who's going to test it and who's going to fix the
problems that are found, and who are they doing it for?

Have you had a need for this Danilo?  Do you use autogen.sh when building .deb
packages?  I thought you just used ./configure from the tarball.  Or do you use
it for something else?  I personally haven't had a need for this, but I'm not
opposed to adding it.  I just want to understand the situations it would be used
in before we add it.

It was mostly a nice thing to have. Feel free to close this report.

I don't really see any disadvantages to changing this, and abstracting out the
do_cmd functions does make the script a bit cleaner, so I've committed it.  I
don't think I'll ever use it, but if somebody does want to override the auto*
version, it's available.