Porting Newlib with current autotools - operating-system

Question

I'm trying to build a toolchain for my hobby kernel, but I'm running into problems when building Newlib. Whenever I try to run autoreconf in my kernels directory under newlib/libc/sys/ I get an error:
configure.in:5: error: support for Cygnus-style trees has been removed
Here is the content of configure.in (basically, taken from the below tutorial):
AC_PREREQ(2.59)
AC_INIT([newlib], [NEWLIB_VERSION])
AC_CONFIG_SRCDIR([crt0.S])
AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR(../../../..)
NEWLIB_CONFIGURE(../../..)
AC_CONFIG_FILES([Makefile])
AC_OUTPUT
and the source for Makefile.am (again mostly from tutorial):
AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS = cygnus
INCLUDES = $(NEWLIB_CFLAGS) $(CROSS_CFLAGS) $(TARGET_CFLAGS)
AM_CCASFLAGS = $(INCLUDES)
noinst_LIBRARIES = lib.a
if MAY_SUPPLY_SYSCALLS
extra_objs = $(lpfx)syscalls.o
else
extra_objs =
endif
lib_a_SOURCES =
lib_a_LIBADD = $(extra_objs)
EXTRA_lib_a_SOURCES = syscalls.c crt0.S
lib_a_DEPENDENCIES = $(extra_objs)
lib_a_CCASFLAGS = $(AM_CCASFLAGS)
lib_a_CFLAGS = $(AM_CFLAGS)
if MAY_SUPPLY_SYSCALLS
all: crt0.o
endif
ACLOCAL_AMFLAGS = -I ../../..
CONFIG_STATUS_DEPENDENCIES = $(newlib_basedir)/configure.host
Yes, I have tried removing the AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS=cygnus.
I've Googled around and been trying to understand this, and as far as I can tell, it is because of the version of autotools I'm using. According to the tutorial I used originally (OSDev - OS Specific Toolchain), I need an older version. My problem is that I'm using Kubuntu, which uses the apt package manager, and that version is not available to fall back to even temporarily. There has to be some fix for this. Either Newlib is outdated (this release is from December of 2013...) or the developers are crazy for depending on an outdated autotools version.
The only other thing I can think is that this is a message from the newlib configuration scheme itself in which case I have no idea how to modify my configure.in and Makefile.am to align with the new newlib configure format. That tutorial is the only one I've found that didn't use libgloss (which I'd prefer not to do) so far and the documentation of adding a new target is rather lacking in the documentation for newlib (or I missed something).
Here is some version information:
System: Kubuntu 14.04
Automake: 1.14.1
Autoconf: 2.69
Newlib: 2.1.0

Answer 1

Unfortunately I'm afraid using automake 1.12 or earlier is your only choice. Ubuntu has an Automake1.11 separate package to help you there, if I'm not mistaken, since the compatibility between 1.12 and 1.14 is generally good, but before that it was spotty.

Answer 2

I am writing this answer for people struggling with the tutorial described here.
I am in the same situation you are (or were), I am building a kernel from scratch and I wanted to port newlib to my toolchain. Unfortunately I think the tutorial has become out of date because I followed the instructions EXACTLY, even installing the correct software with the proper versions (including the correct newlib version). The accepted solution above didn't work for me but I found another solution that might work for others:
Step 1 - get the correct software
Acquire Automake (v1.12) and Autoconf (v2.65) from here:
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/automake/automake-1.12.tar.gz
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.65.tar.gz
Step 2 - build process
Untar both of the archives:
tar xf automake-1.12.tar.gz
tar xf autoconf-2.65.tar.gz
Create a destination folder:
mkdir ~/bin
Create a build folder:
mkdir build
cd build
Configure automake first:
../automake-1.12/configure --prefix="~/bin"
Make and install
make && make install
Now lets configure autoconf
../autoconf-2.65/configure --prefix=~/bin
Then make and install:
make && make install
You should now have the proper binaries in ~/bin!
Step 3 - update PATH
To add these binaries to your path temporarily (recommended):
export PATH=~/bin:$PATH
Once you update your path, rerun autoconf and autoreconf and it should complete.