While updating the openSuse package to Automake 1.18, I stumbled across 
the attached patch. I got permission from the author to upstream it.
Are you interested?

Bye
Christoph

-- 
Most customers will not accept source code with compile errors in it.
                  Dan Saks, CppCon 2016 (https://youtu.be/D7Sd8A6_fYU)