As I understand, this problem is due to old gnulib's m4 macros overriding and breaks autoconf.
This solution worked for me: In the release package 1) delete m4/extensions.m4 2) comment out any AC_REQUIRE([AC_GNU_SOURCE]) in /m4 directory and/or replace them with AC_REQUIRE([AC_USE_SYSTEM_EXTENSIONS]) 3) replace any AC_REQUIRE([gl_USE_SYSTEM_EXTENSIONS]) with AC_REQUIRE([AC_USE_SYSTEM_EXTENSIONS])
