Backport of devtodo from "sid" fails to compile

[Joerg Desch <news@jdesch.de>]

I'm missing "devtodo" in Jessie and so I've tried to build the package 
from Sid. But this fails and I don't know why. First, the package has a 
Makefile.am but no configure.ac.  The "autoreconf" fails to create a 
missing file "compile".

I have no detailed experiences with the autotools, so I don't know whats 
going wrong. Any ideas?

Here is the output:

automake: warning: autoconf input should be named 'configure.ac', not 
'configure.in'
configure.in:3: warning: AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE: two- and three-arguments forms 
are deprecated.  For more info, see:
configure.in:3: http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/
automake.html#Modernize-AM_005fINIT_005fAUTOMAKE-invocation
configure.in:12: error: required file './compile' not found
configure.in:12:   'automake --add-missing' can install 'compile'
Makefile.am:2: warning: shell ls contrib/*: non-POSIX variable name
Makefile.am:2: (probably a GNU make extension)
doc/Makefile.am:10: warning: addprefix $(DESTDIR: non-POSIX variable name
doc/Makefile.am:10: (probably a GNU make extension)
doc/Makefile.am:10: warning: addsuffix .1, $(manlinks: non-POSIX variable 
name
doc/Makefile.am:10: (probably a GNU make extension)
src/Makefile.am:20: warning: addprefix $(DESTDIR: non-POSIX variable name
src/Makefile.am:20: (probably a GNU make extension)
src/Makefile.am:7: warning: 'INCLUDES' is the old name for 
'AM_CPPFLAGS' (or '*_CPPFLAGS')
automake: warning: autoconf input should be named 'configure.ac', not 
'configure.in'
autoreconf: automake failed with exit status: 1
debian/rules:16: recipe for target 'build-stamp' failed
make: *** [build-stamp] Error 1

Thanks in advance.