The repository already contains a "autogen.sh" script, which properly
takes care of generating the "configure" script, without having to call
autoconf and automake by hand, and then automatically calls the
"configure" script. So what must be done instead is simply:
$ ./autogen.sh
$ make
If you want to pass options to the configure script, you can do so after
running "autogen.sh", or passing the options to autogen.sh itself, which
will automatically pass them to "configure".
Also, in ubuntu, you may need to have the autoconf and automake packages
installed, since it think they're not included by default.