Libkate does not configure and compile, problems with ACLOCAL_PATH, LEXLIB (with workaround)

I tried to build the recipe libkate for gstreamer 1.15.1 on Debian GNU/Linux 4.18.0 (buster):

cerbero build libkate

I ran into the following error:

[(4/4) libkate -> configure ]
Running command 'autoreconf -f -i'
configure.ac:31: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_LIBTOOL_DLOPEN
      If this token and others are legitimate, please use m4_pattern_allow.
      See the Autoconf documentation.
configure.ac:32: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_PROG_LIBTOOL
configure.ac:36: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_PROG_NM
autoreconf: /home/pascal/cerbero/build/dist/linux_x86_64/bin/autoconf failed with exit status: 1

This could be solved using

export ACLOCAL_PATH=/home/pascal/cerbero/build/build-tools/share/aclocal/

The step compile failed as well:

/usr/bin/ld: /home/pascal/cerbero/build/dist/linux_x86_64/lib/libfl.so: undefined reference to `yylex'

This could be solved by pausing cerbero after configure switching to the libkate source directory and rerunning configure with the argument LIBLEX= and continuing cerbero:

cerbero build libkate
^Z #pause after configure is done
cd build/sources/linux_x86_64/libkate-0.4.1 
./configure LEXLIB=
cd -
fg