Problem with autoreconf

Hello,

I am working with an open source project.
I just downloaded the code using svn.

The project author has asked to run autoreconf to generate
the necessary build files. However, when I run them I get the
following error:

aclocal: unrecognized option -- `--install'
Try `aclocal --help' for more information.
autoreconf: aclocal failed with exit status: 1

What could be the problem?

I am using ubuntu 7.10.

- Kaustubh