How to rebuild openssh 5.2p1 after changing configure.ac

Question

I needed to add AM_PATH_CHECK to configure.am I then try to run the usual sequence of autotools commands to rebuild all the makefiles and whatnot:

aclocal
automake -ac
autoheader
autoreconf
./configure
make

and here my lack of understanding of autotools showes up because this release of openssh has no Makefile.am??? now what do I do?

if i try to ignore this and build anyway configure dies with this lovely error:

checking whether OpenSSL's PRNG is internally seeded... yes
./configure: line 18275: syntax error near unexpected token `PROG_LS,'
./configure: line 18275: `OSSH_PATH_ENTROPY_PROG(PROG_LS, ls)'

caused by this line in configure.ac:

OSSH_PATH_ENTROPY_PROG(PROG_LS, ls)

Is this actually caused by my changes to configure.ac?
what can I do to regenerate the required files to allow configure to work?
if i take my changes out and dont run aclocal then it works???

Answer 1

Check where is the .m4 file where OSSH_PATH_ENTROPY_PROG is defined, then pass its directory to aclocal:

aclocal -I <directory>

If it doesn't have Makefile.am, just skip the automake command.