4.0.7-gamma build: aclocal and automake error on Red Hat 8

[Robert L Cochran]

While trying to build 4.0.7-gamma from the source rpm with this
incantation:

rpmbuild -bb mysql-4.0.7-gamma.spec

on an old machine which has seen several Red Hat upgrades (ever since
version 6.0), the build continues for nearly an hour until it gets this
error:

make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/redhat/BUILD/mysql-4.0.7-gamma'
rm -f config.status config.cache config.log
+ mv Docs/manual.ps.save Docs/manual.ps
+ automake
configure.in:7: your implementation of AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE comes from an
configure.in:7: old Automake version.  You should recreate aclocal.m4
configure.in:7: with aclocal and run automake again.
automake: strings/Makefile.am: Assembler source seen but `CCAS' not defined in
`configure.in'
automake: strings/Makefile.am: Assembler source seen but `CCASFLAGS' not defined in
`configure.in'
error: Bad exit status from /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.95423 (%build)


RPM build errors:
    Bad exit status from /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.95423 (%build)

This seems very similar to message #129607 ("Source RPM Compile Error".)
I'm using GNU libtool 1.4.2
GNU automake 1.6.3
GNU autoconf 2.53

How can I fix this?

Thanks

Bob Cochran
Greenbelt, Maryland, USA