They are not installed here, if not present, build fails

Hmm. 

The problem is that the gtk-doc version on my system is different than the one in git, so running autogen dirties the checkout.

autogen checks for --enable-gtk-doc being passed, and only conditionally calls gtkdocize in this case. 

I think the following should work even with removing these files from git:

- adding a "-" in front of the gtk-doc.make include in glib/reference/Makefile.am, and

- replacing the GTK_DOC_CHECK call in configure with

    m4_ifdef([GTK_DOC_CHECK],[GTK_DOC_CHECK([1.0])])

Created attachment 26447 [details] [review]
possible fix

Could you test whether with this patch and removed aclocal.m4, gtk-doc.make, m4/gtk-doc.m4 files, autogen'ing (without --enable-gtk-doc of course) works without having gtk-doc installed?

Actually you also might need to comment out the EXTRA_DIST += at the end of glib/reference/Makefile.am .

Seems to build, commited

if anyone from the gnome/gtk side comes telling i broke something i'll come after you ;-)