how to get autoconf to run

[Gary Aitken]

Hate to return so soon, but what is required in Makefile to get
autoconf to do its thing?

According the the porter's handbook, adding

USE_AUTOTOOLS=  autoheader aclocal

should get autoconf to do its thing.
It doesn't mention
   GNU_CONFIGURE=  yes
but I assume that is also required.
In any case, I've tried it both ways.
without GNU_CONFIGURE, make config succeeds but does nothing;
in particular, no "configure" file is created.

with GNU_CONFIGURE:

$ make configure
===>  Configuring for ufraw-devel-g20161113
env: ./configure: No such file or directory
===>  Script "configure" failed unexpectedly.

I've tried running as root as well as regular user with the same results.
There are no new files in the working directories.
My search for clues turned up nothing.

Thanks for any pointers,

Gary