Why did autoconf deps change? Leads to xrender and pango problems?

As I pull my hair out trying to figure out why the xrender port has recently
given me problems (at first thinking it had to do with Xcode, Intel, Mac OS
X Server 10.4.7 UB, etc., etc.) I have noticed something subtle. Even with
DarwinPorts (MacPorts) 1.3.1 ... after I install it from source and then
perform a:

# port -d selfupdate

followed by a:

# port -v sync

I notice that something has changed recently to autoconf, specifically
autoconf states that it needs perl5.8 as a dependency. But this was not
always the case. DP 1.3.1 (and also performing a selfupdate and sync from
August 1st 2006), autoconf at that time did not require perl5.8, very
specifically we have somehow gone from:

port deps autoconf
autoconf has no dependencies


to:

port deps autoconf
> autoconf has runtime dependencies on:
>         perl5.8
>


The question is why. And further, I wonder if this caused a perturbation in
the dependency chain that leads up to the xrender port that has caused me
nightmares the past several days? Specifically:

port deps xrender
> xrender has library dependencies on:
>         XFree86
>         render
>

to:

port deps XFree86
XFree86 has build dependencies on:
        perl5.8


And now for whatever perl5.8 has itself been shuffled in the dependency
chain, I can't help but wonder if this part of the problem that I have been
observing with xrender.

xrender is quite important to other ports in the dependency chain. For
example, I saw complaints about pango. Well, if we do a trace, look at this:

$ port deps pango
> pango has library dependencies on:
>         glib2
>         XFree86
>         Xft2
>         cairo
>

which leads to ...

$ port deps Xft2
> Xft2 has library dependencies on:
>         pkgconfig
>         zlib
>         xrender
>         freetype
>         fontconfig
>         expat
>


Is there any reason why MacPorts / DarwinPorts 1.3.2 can not revert back to
its state on 1 August 2006? At that time I had no problem building xrender
(and pango for that matter) on both PowerPC but had not tried at that time
on Intel hardware. However, earlier in the year I was fooling around with DP
(I think it was version 1.2.1) on Intel but building to an HFS disc volume.
The file system does not matter however (as I have proven by building tons
of ports on UFS on PowerPC hardware).

These are the war stories of mere mortals like we that Steve Jobs doesn't
speak of in his charismatic Keynote presentations! But I can assure that
gluing tons of open source to a quasi open source platform that is
undergoing hardware architecture changes creates just what we should expect
-- lots of stress :-)

Regards,

T.