Thanks. The patch worked. However, I noticed a behavior new to 1.28 (not present in 1.27.1). Namely, tar doing the "./configure" stage twice, and appears to be not recognizing my automake. I do ./configure, and then when that's done I do "make" and I get:
CDPATH="${ZSH_VERSION+.}:" && cd . && /bin/sh /Users/chdiza/Downloads/tar-1.28/build-aux/missing aclocal-1.14 -I m4
CDPATH="${ZSH_VERSION+.}:" && cd . && /bin/sh /Users/chdiza/Downloads/tar-1.28/build-aux/missing autoconf
cd . && /bin/sh /Users/chdiza/Downloads/tar-1.28/build-aux/missing automake-1.14 --gnits
/bin/sh ./config.status --recheck
And the entire configure procedure repeats itself.
My autoconf and automake are in /usr/local/bin as they always have been. They are also on my $PATH. 1.27.1 and earlier don't repeat the configuration, and they don't complain that they can't find autotools.
Note that autoconf/automake don't come with MacOSX anymore (since 10.7, I think).
Cheers,
Charles