aclocal needed to be called with version number on Ubuntu-20.02 and Fedora-34

[cwt]

autogen.sh on Ubuntu-20.04 and Fedora-39 produce error message from aclocal

$ ./autogen.sh
+ aclocal
configure.ac:7: error: AC_INIT should be called with package and version arguments
/usr/share/aclocal-1.16/init.m4:29: AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE is expanded from...
configure.ac:7: the top level
autom4te: /usr/bin/m4 failed with exit status: 1
aclocal: error: echo failed with exit status: 1

and then automake also produce a very long error.

However, if aclocal is changed to aclocal-1.16:

diff --git a/autogen.sh b/autogen.sh
index f236407..fe8f0e2 100755
--- a/autogen.sh
+++ b/autogen.sh
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 #!/bin/sh

 set -x
-aclocal
+aclocal-1.16
 automake --add-missing
 # Use -f so git-version-gen does refresh
 autoconf -f

Then there is no error at all.

$ ./autogen.sh
+ aclocal-1.16
+ automake --add-missing
configure.ac:7: installing './missing'
+ autoconf -f

The output configure file is working properly on Ubuntu-20.04.

[thep]

I wonder which aclocal version we get by plain aclocal command. Can I get the results of "aclocal --version" and "aclocal-1.16 --version" commands on your system(s)?

[cwt]

I don't know why I put Fedora-39 in the title, I must mixed Python-3.9 which is the default python for Fedora 34. btw, the results showing it's the same version, still produce error message if called without version.

plain aclocal

[root@851bf045d904 fonts-tlwg]# aclocal --version
aclocal (GNU automake) 1.16.2
Copyright (C) 2020 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv2+: GNU GPL version 2 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by Tom Tromey <tromey@redhat.com>
       and Alexandre Duret-Lutz <adl@gnu.org>.

aclocal-1.16

[root@851bf045d904 fonts-tlwg]# aclocal-1.16 --version
aclocal (GNU automake) 1.16.2
Copyright (C) 2020 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv2+: GNU GPL version 2 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by Tom Tromey <tromey@redhat.com>
       and Alexandre Duret-Lutz <adl@gnu.org>.