OK, thank you for the clarification. I hope the following patch is correct.
 
diff --git a/configure.ac b/configure.ac
index 826e644..3e855a1 100644
--- a/configure.ac
+++ b/configure.ac
@@ -26,7 +26,20 @@ AC_PREREQ(2.63)                      dnl Minimum Autoconf version required.
 
 dnl We use GNU make extensions; automake 1.10 defaults to -Wportability.
 AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE([gnits 1.8 -Wno-portability dist-bzip2 no-dist-gzip])
-AM_MAINTAINER_MODE
+
+dnl If autogenerated files are absent, set maintainer mode to recreate them
+if test ! -f ${srcdir}/libcpu/i386_dis.h; then
+  use_maintainer_mode=enable
+elif test ! -f ${srcdir}/libcpu/x86_64_dis.h; then
+  use_maintainer_mode=enable
+fi
+if test -z "$use_maintainer_mode"; then
+  AM_MAINTAINER_MODE
+else
+  AM_MAINTAINER_MODE(enable)
+  AC_MSG_WARN([Maintainer mode is turned on as libcpu files not found])
+fi
+
 
Many thanks,
--Serge

2011/12/10 Mark Wielaard <mjw@redhat.com>
On Thu, Dec 08, 2011 at 11:26:11AM -0500, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> On Thursday 08 December 2011 06:46:52 Serge Pavlov wrote:
> > As I understand these files (*_dis.h) are needed only for Intel platform?
>
> iirc, elfutils will build all backends regardless of the system it will be
> running on.  so most likely, you don't want the cpu checks.

Indeed. In general it is fine to manipulate a ELF file from one
architure on any other architecture. There are even a couple of
testcases that explicitly do so.

Cheers,

Mark