I've been trying to build rcs from the git repository. I wasn't able to
find any instructions, so its been trail and error. I have something
that works, but not out of the box. The steps I am following are:

git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/rcs.git
cd rcs
git submodule add git://git.savannah.gnu.org/gnulib.git
PATH=$PATH:~/rcs/gnulib/
sh autogen.sh

And the autogen.sh blows up with this error:

gnulib-tool: option --conditional-dependencies is not supported with
--with-tests
+ autoreconf --install --symlink
sh: 1: build-aux/git-version-gen: not found
configure.ac:26: error: AC_INIT should be called with package and
version arguments
/usr/share/aclocal-1.11/init.m4:26: AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE is expanded from...
configure.ac:26: the top level
autom4te: /usr/bin/m4 failed with exit status: 1
aclocal: /usr/bin/autom4te failed with exit status: 1
autoreconf: aclocal failed with exit status: 1

And I've been able to get around it by running this:

gnulib-tool --update --no-conditional-dependencies
sh autogen.sh

Which does die with this error:

+ actually build-aux/missing
+ gnulib-tool --copy-file build-aux/missing
/home/xxx/rcs/gnulib//gnulib-tool: *** file
/home/xxx/rcs/gnulib//build-aux/missing not found
/home/xxx/rcs/gnulib//gnulib-tool: *** Stop.

But not before producing a working configure script.