Autoconf/Automake is not using version from AC_INIT

[Bob Friesenhahn]

I recently updated GraphicsMagick to use the 5 argument form of 
AC_INIT and the one argument form of AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE.  I also used 
m4_esyscmd to get version info from an external script.  The 
invokation looks like this:

AC_INIT(m4_esyscmd([./version.sh packagename]),
        m4_esyscmd([./version.sh packageversion]),
        m4_esyscmd([./version.sh packagebugreport]),
        m4_esyscmd([./version.sh packagetarname]),
        m4_esyscmd([./version.sh packageurl]))

Today I noticed that 'make dist' is producing the wrong tarball 
package version.  Instead of producing the expected version, the 
tarball version matches the date of the configure.ac file.

This is what comes out of the version.sh script:

./version.sh packageversion
1.4.020210110%

The version.sh script bases the package version on the most recent 
entry in the ChangeLog file.

This is what is claimed to be the tarball version several times 
already:

  GraphicsMagick-1.4.020210106.tar.gz

This is the timestamp on the Autotools files which appear to 
reflect the claimed version:

% ls -lg configure.ac Makefile.am configure
-rw-r--r--   1 home       12435 Jan  6 11:42 Makefile.am
-rwxr-xr-x   1 home      987623 Jan  6 11:48 configure*
-rw-r--r--   1 home      122830 Jan  6 11:42 configure.ac

What is the trick to ensuring that autoconf and Automake do use the 
version supplied to AC_INIT?  It seems that now the configure script 
needs to be re-generated but nothing seems to force that.

Looking at Autoconf itself, I see dreadful looking things such as an 
extra GNUmakefile and targets which create hidden files which go into 
the tarball.  If this sort of thing is necessary, then I will revert 
my few days of work.

Thanks,

Bob
--
Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen@simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/
Public Key,     http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/public-key.txt