compatibility problem AC_SUBST

[Fritz Code]

Hi,

need to compile a very old software package which is based on automake 1.4.
But I was not able to get this version of automake for my SuSE Linux 10.2.
The installed version I'm using is 1.9.

If I execute the script autogen.sh (which is provided by the software and
executes aclocal, autoheader, autoconf, automake -a)
I get the following error:

configure.in:74: configure substitutions are not allowed in _SOURCES
variables

The problem seems to be related to this lines of code.

AC_SUBST(WIDGET)
AC_SUBST(DEBUGGING)
AC_SUBST(VIDBASE)
AC_SUBST(DRIVER)
AC_SUBST(VIDWRAP)
AC_SUBST(INPUT)
AC_SUBST(FORMATS)
AC_SUBST(FONT)
AC_SUBST(APPMGR)
AC_SUBST(OS)
AC_SUBST(VIDSUBDIRS)
AC_SUBST(CURSES)

Well after doing some reserach I found out that AC_SUBST is used to declare
a variable in all files of the project.

If I comment some of the statements above I can run autogen, configure. But
make cancels with many linker errors.


Well is there any alternative to AC_SUBST ?
thanks

-- 
Regards,
--Codefritz