BUG of unfindable (and likely un-necessary) PRE-REQUIREMENT

[John D. Hendrickson]

GNU M4 is a prerequisite for Autoconf.

      but m4 has been altered to require make and also autoconf
      not to mention perl, also other things; before they handn't been

http://www.perl.org/

      but perl requires autoconf and m4 and other things

      perl is taken from awk and so much better i understand
      but i'm unsure why autoconf, make, and gcc now depend on it
      because in the past they didn't

i am researching what the build path of as(1) -> gcc(1) -> X11R7.6 just 
for pc nothing complicated

what i'm finding is many dependancy issues that keep changing even 
during the process and ...

       ie, i'm on filewatcher.org looking for scattered sources

but my quest is to have a "VERSION" that distro admins didn't release; a 
backport of X11 using new but trim kernel and older unix base.  it works 
it's firefox GTK that throws a flag.

GTK (or was it gdk?)  demanded i upgrade gcc , and here i am

i'm ending up with more task than i'd hoped for and little help

i know "how" bit it's a been made a terrible process.

i can barely find and make a (chroot) which can "upstart" from scratch 
which does not end up REQUIRING ITSELF IN THE RESULT by depends

see ? :)

thanks wonderful too have a good day and all that  -jh