Chicken/egg problem building from a 'git clone'

I have an elderly laptop. I can build and install git using a tarball. I original installed git 1.6.0. This evening I noticed 1.6.1 was availble, and I decided to try building from the git repository using 'git clone' as described in the git home page. And to jump ahead of myself, I want to point out that 1.6.1 will build from the tarball. However...

The workspace I get using 'git clone' does not provide a configure file. And because my laptop isn't running a bleeding edge distribution, my build tools are older than you'd expect, so...

"make all" fails becuase my libaries are old:

    LINK git-fast-import
fast-import.o: In function `store_object':
/usr/local/src/git/git/fast-import.c:1086: undefined reference to `deflateBound'
/usr/local/src/git/git/fast-import.c:1109: undefined reference to `deflateBound'

"make configure" fails because my autoconf is too old.

    GEN configure
Usage: autoconf [-h] [--help] [-m dir] [--macrodir=dir]
       [-l dir] [--localdir=dir] [--version] [template-file]
make: *** [configure] Error 1

This found an issue with the Makefile, because my autoconf is sooo old, it's puking on the configure target build command, in part:

  autoconf -o $@ $<+ && \

because this old autoconf doesn't have a -o parameter. If I change the Makefile to:

  autoconf $<+ >$@ && \

Then the error becomes
    GEN configure
FATAL ERROR: Autoconf version 2.59 or higher is required for this script
make: *** [configure] Error 2

which is closer to what you intended. I'm not sure what difference it makes between specifying -o and simply letting it default.

Anyway, would it break anything to have a 'configure' script provided as part of the clone pull? It's provided in the tarball, and if I copy the 1.6.1 configure script into my git workspace and run it, it seems to build. I'm just not sure I trust it to be up-to-date with the configure script you folks can generate with your modern build tools using 'make configure'.

I realize the configure script is technically a build target but not having it does cause this chicken-egg issue on older platforms.