The whole point of Autotools is to provide an arcane M4-macro-based language which ultimately compiles to a shell script called ./configure. You can ship this compiled shell script with the source code and that script should do everything to detect the environment and prepare the program for building. Autotools should only be required by someone who wants to tweak the tests and refresh that shell script.
It defeats the point of Autotools if GNU This and GNU That has to be installed on the system for it to work. Originally, it was invented to simplify the porting of programs to various Unix systems, which could not be counted on to have anything on them. Even the constructs used by the generated shell code in ./configure had to be very carefully selected to make sure they would work on every broken old shell just about everywhere.
The problem you're running into is due to some broken Makefile steps invented by people who simply don't understand what Autotools is for and the role of the final ./configure script.
As a workaround, you can go into the Makefile and make some changes to get this out of the way. As an example, I'm building the Git head of GNU Awk and running into this same problem. I applied this patch to Makefile.in, however, and I can sucessfully make gawk:
diff --git a/Makefile.in b/Makefile.in
index 5585046..b8b8588 100644
--- a/Makefile.in
+++ b/Makefile.in
@@ -312,12 +312,12 @@ distcleancheck_listfiles = find . -type f -print
# Directory for gawk's data files. Automake supplies datadir.
pkgdatadir = $(datadir)/awk
-ACLOCAL = @ACLOCAL@
+ACLOCAL = true
AMTAR = @AMTAR@
AM_DEFAULT_VERBOSITY = @AM_DEFAULT_VERBOSITY@
-AUTOCONF = @AUTOCONF@
-AUTOHEADER = @AUTOHEADER@
-AUTOMAKE = @AUTOMAKE@
+AUTOCONF = true
+AUTOHEADER = true
+AUTOMAKE = true
AWK = @AWK@
CC = @CC@
CCDEPMODE = @CCDEPMODE@
Basically, I changed things so that the harmless true shell command is substituted for all the Auto-stuff programs.
The actual build steps for Gawk don't need the Auto-stuff! It's only involved in some rules that get invoked if parts of the Auto-stuff have changed and need to be re-processed. However, the Makefile is structured in such a way that it fails if the tools aren't present.
Before the above patch:
$ ./configure
[...]
$ make gawk
CDPATH="${ZSH_VERSION+.}:" && cd . && /bin/bash /home/kaz/gawk/missing aclocal-1.15 -I m4
/home/kaz/gawk/missing: line 81: aclocal-1.15: command not found
WARNING: 'aclocal-1.15' is missing on your system.
You should only need it if you modified 'acinclude.m4' or
'configure.ac' or m4 files included by 'configure.ac'.
The 'aclocal' program is part of the GNU Automake package:
<http://www.gnu.org/software/automake>
It also requires GNU Autoconf, GNU m4 and Perl in order to run:
<http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf>
<http://www.gnu.org/software/m4/>
<http://www.perl.org/>
make: *** [aclocal.m4] Error 127
After the patch:
$ ./configure
[...]
$ make gawk
CDPATH="${ZSH_VERSION+.}:" && cd . && true -I m4
CDPATH="${ZSH_VERSION+.}:" && cd . && true
gcc -std=gnu99 -DDEFPATH='".:/usr/local/share/awk"' -DDEFLIBPATH="\"/usr/local/lib/gawk\"" -DSHLIBEXT="\"so"\" -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -DGAWK -DLOCALEDIR='"/usr/local/share/locale"' -I. -g -O2 -DNDEBUG -MT array.o -MD -MP -MF .deps/array.Tpo -c -o array.o array.c
[...]
gcc -std=gnu99 -g -O2 -DNDEBUG -Wl,-export-dynamic -o gawk array.o awkgram.o builtin.o cint_array.o command.o debug.o dfa.o eval.o ext.o field.o floatcomp.o gawkapi.o gawkmisc.o getopt.o getopt1.o int_array.o io.o main.o mpfr.o msg.o node.o profile.o random.o re.o regex.o replace.o str_array.o symbol.o version.o -ldl -lm
$ ./gawk --version
GNU Awk 4.1.60, API: 1.2
Copyright (C) 1989, 1991-2015 Free Software Foundation.
[...]
There we go. As you can see, the CDPATH= command lines there are where the Auto-stuff was being invoked, where you see the true commands. These report successful termination, and so it just falls through that junk to do the darned build, which is perfectly configured.
I did make gawk because there are some subdirectories that get built which fail; the trick has to be repeated for their respective Makefiles.
If you're running into this kind of thing with a pristine, official tarball of the program from its developers, then complain. It should just unpack, ./configure and make without you having to patch anything or install any Automake or Autoconf materials.
Ideally, a pull of their Git head should also behave that way.
