From what I can tell, this is actually an intltool bug.  Intltool relies on some
other package installing the mkinstalldirs program as a side effect.

However, automake-1.8 doesn't install it anymore (since it doesn't use it). 
Intltool should either install mkinstalldirs when "intltoolize" is run, or not
rely on the program at all.

If you decide to get rid of the mkinstalldirs dependency in intltool, you might
want to swipe part of automake-1.8's mkdirp.m4 macro and stick it in intltool.m4:

AC_DEFUN([AM_PROG_MKDIR_P],
[if mkdir -p -- . 2>/dev/null; then
  # Keeping the `.' argument allows $(mkdir_p) to be used without
  # argument.  Indeed, we sometimes output rules like
  #   $(mkdir_p) $(somedir)
  # where $(somedir) is conditionally defined.
  # (`test -n '$(somedir)' && $(mkdir_p) $(somedir)' is a more
  # expensive solution, as it forces Make to start a sub-shell.)
  mkdir_p='mkdir -p -- .'
else
  # On NextStep and OpenStep, the `mkdir' command does not
  # recognize any option.  It will interpret all options as
  # directories to create, and then abort because `.' already
  # exists.
  for d in ./-p ./--;
  do
    test -d $d && rmdir $d
  done
  # $(mkinstalldirs) is defined by Automake if mkinstalldirs exists.
  if test -f "$ac_aux_dir/mkinstalldirs"; then
    mkdir_p='$(mkinstalldirs)'
  else
    mkdir_p='$(install_sh) -d'
  fi
fi
AC_SUBST([mkdir_p])])

Obviously, you'd use a different macro/variable name, so as to not get in
automake's way.

This also happens building nautilus-media and gaim. Basically any combination of
./po compilation and automake-1.8. I edited bootstrap to pickup 1.8.3 but the
result is the same. Should a bug be opened against intltool/gettext on this? I
can get around the problem by simple copying mkinstalldirs into the source tree
and rebuilding, but I'd rather the problem wasn't there..

Looked into this, and it doesn't appear to be an intltool bug after all, since
intltool isn't using mkinstalldirs in any of its code anymore.

For shared-mime-info they are using GNU gettext, but not running gettextize or
autopoint from the autogen.sh, so since mkinstalldirs isn't checked into CVS, it
isn't found at all.  This one probably counts as a bug against shared-mime-info
(which uses freedesktop.org's bugzilla, iirc).

For the other modules, they are using glib-gettextize.  Now glib-gettextize
installs a makefile using mkinstalldirs without actually installing the file
itself.  ie. it relies on the side effect of automake installing a mkinstalldirs
script, which Automake-1.8 doesn't do.

same problem with gnome26. The error I get is

Making install in po
make[1]: Entering directory `/opt/cvs/gnome2/shared-mime-info/po'
if test -r ".././mkinstalldirs"; then \
  .././mkinstalldirs /opt/gnome26/share; \
else \
  /bin/sh ../mkinstalldirs /opt/gnome26/share; \
fi
../mkinstalldirs: ../mkinstalldirs: No such file or directory
make[1]: *** [install-data-yes] Error 127
make[1]: Leaving directory `/opt/cvs/gnome2/shared-mime-info/po'

the work around I have used is to
cd /opt/cvs/gnome2/shared-mime-info
ln -s /opt/gnome26/share/automake-1.7/mkinstalldirs .

This creates the mkinstalldirs the is used in .../po directory. it seems that
automake should create this link. (I searched for mkinstalldirs in the build
tree and found a lot of it, linked to various versions of
automake-xxx/mkinstalldirs.

I believe this should be fixed permanently. checked freedesktop.org bugzilla it
is already on the list BUG# 576  Opened: 2004-04-30 10:09 Status: NEW

I made a dirty hack to bin/automake-1.8 (a perl script) which calls a new
function to copy mkinstalldirs to the {topsrcdir}/ and then continue. It works
fine, but it is not a satisfactory solution.

I'm not as sure that this is an intltool bug now.  It is the po/Makefile.in.in
which is using mkinstalldirs, but not because of intltool's patching.

GNU Gettext's scripts will place a copy of mkinstalldirs in the package's root
directory, so it functions okay with Automake-1.8

However glib-gettextize doesn't add mkinstalldirs, which means you run into
problems with it (with or without intltool).  This is handled in bug 132858.

As for shared-mime-info, they have checked in the files glib-gettextize into CVS
but omitted mkinstalldirs, so suffer from the same problem.  This is handled in:
  http://freedesktop.org/cgi-bin/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=576

Since shared-mime-info is in another bugzilla, I'll mark this as a dupe of the
glib bug.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 132858 ***