Thanks for all the fixes - I can build both now. Remaining issues: AB_INIT is not present in master, just in 1.8 (I think - I am still a git newbie).
INSTALL is checked in, but gets overwritten by autoreconf. It seems like since this is a generated file it should not be checked in. vm branch doesn't build; seems like same gnulib issues as master had. If you'd like, you can see my build logs at http://autobuild.josefsson.org/guile/#guile-x86_64-unknown-netbsd4.99.72
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