this bug is missing an actual problem description or suggested change. it's not even useful to stirr a relevant discussion this way (which would better be had on gtk-devel-list anyways). please try to provide more useful information when filing future bugs. best use the simple bug report form here: 
  http://bugzilla.gnome.org/simple-bug-guide.cgi?product=gtk%2B
that guides you through several problem description aspects which provide neccessary and relevant information for bug resolution for us.

The actual bug is that several distro no longer ship automake-1.7. By requiring this very you raise the entry barrier level.
Forcing automake-1.9 does not work either because automake-1.9 chokes on it.

If I force automake-1.9, I get this:

./autogen.sh 
I am going to run ./configure with no arguments - if you wish 
to pass any to it, please specify them on the ./autogen.sh command line.
autoheader: WARNING: Using auxiliary files such as `acconfig.h', `config.h.bot'
autoheader: WARNING: and `config.h.top', to define templates for `config.h.in'
autoheader: WARNING: is deprecated and discouraged.
autoheader: 
autoheader: WARNING: Using the third argument of `AC_DEFINE' and
autoheader: WARNING: `AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED' allows to define a template without
autoheader: WARNING: `acconfig.h':
autoheader: 
autoheader: WARNING:   AC_DEFINE([NEED_FUNC_MAIN], 1,
autoheader:             [Define if a function `main' is needed.])
autoheader: 
autoheader: WARNING: More sophisticated templates can also be produced, see the
autoheader: WARNING: documentation.
automake-1.9: html was already defined in condition !HAVE_DOCBOOK, which is included in condition TRUE ...
docs/faq/Makefile.am:21: ... `html' previously defined here
automake-1.9: pdf was already defined in condition !HAVE_DOCBOOK, which is included in condition TRUE ...
docs/faq/Makefile.am:26: ... `pdf' previously defined here
automake-1.9: html was already defined in condition !HAVE_DOCBOOK, which is included in condition TRUE ...
docs/tutorial/Makefile.am:56: ... `html' previously defined here
automake-1.9: pdf was already defined in condition !HAVE_DOCBOOK, which is

glib suffer from the same disease.

The disease, if there is any, is with a distribution that decides to stop providing build infrastructure that is still in wide use. 

Yeah, automake has made it very easy to have multiple versions installed side by side, and with that the freedom to break backwards compatibility. I don't know why a distro would drop old versions.

closing the bug *again*, because i still don't see a real problem description or constructive resolution submission.

*** Bug 564349 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Reopen per Matthias comment on bug #564349 waiting for someone to bring with a patch.

You can use automake 1.10 and 1.11 since GTK+ 2.18, so closing as FIXED