It seems reasonable to me that the complex source generation happen only
under --enable-maintainer-mode. The *_defs files don't change more often
than, say, Makefile.am files, and changing those already requires setting
--enable-maintainer-mode. I've put such changes on the new branch
roland/maintainer-gendis, and if nobody objects soon I will merge it.
For pedanticism, I still think it would be proper to make the maintainer
build cross-friendly. But automake/autoconf makes that enough of a hassle
that I'm not bothering with it now.
Thanks,
Roland