error 'traces.m4' running automake-1.7

[Dave Benson]

hello...

i'm trying to upgrade a project to use automake-1.7
and i'm getting the following error(s):

/tmp/am4tf8PSRs/traces.m4:822: /usr/bin/m4: Error matching regular expression 
`^ *\(.*\) *$'
Use of uninitialized value in split at /usr/local/bin/automake-1.7 line 5077, 
<GEN0> line 283.

clearly the second is caused by the first.. but where is traces.m4 coming from?
or, how can i make the tmp-dir not be deleted?

also:  what's going wrong in the first place?  that message is pretty vague...

- dave