1. Unpack gnome-doc-utils 0.8.0
2. Patch configure.in and various Makefile.am
3. "autoreconf -f" fails:

gnome-doc-utils.make:474: ENABLE_SK does not appear in AM_CONDITIONAL
doc/gnome-doc-make/Makefile.am:1:   `gnome-doc-utils.make' included from here
gnome-doc-utils.make:474: ENABLE_SK does not appear in AM_CONDITIONAL
doc/xslt/Makefile.am:1:   `gnome-doc-utils.make' included from here
gnome-doc-utils.make:474: ENABLE_SK does not appear in AM_CONDITIONAL
Makefile.am:1:   `gnome-doc-utils.make' included from here
autoreconf: automake failed with exit status: 1
### execution of autoreconf failed, exit code 1

4. Pull g-d-u from CVS
5. Repeat Step 2
6. "autogen.sh" succeeds
7. Unpack g-d-u-0.8.0
8. "./configure && make && make install" succeeds (modulo the local experimenting I was doing in Step 2 is not present)
9. Repeat Steps 1-3, and now autoreconf succeeds.

The local directory isn't in the default .m4 search path for autoconf, so g-d-u.m4 isn't found unless g-d-u is already installed (which places g-d-u.m4 in the standard aclocal .m4 repository), 

It succeeds for autogen.sh only because that script explicitly adds it to the search path:

# Bootstrap off the local gnome-doc-utils.m4
ACLOCAL_FLAGS="-I . $ACLOCAL_FLAGS"
export ACLOCAL_FLAGS

But that doesn't help if one is starting with with dist tarball. A more general solution is to have Makefile.am declare that flag:

ACLOCAL_AMFLAGS=-I .

That's pretty much the whole reason ACLOCAL_AMFLAGS exists:)