Unescaped left brace automake line 3936 on perl5.26

[oy5tein]

On ubuntu 18.04 with perl 5.26
Running:
python build.py -b zed -p zynq

stops here:

configure.ac:39: the top level
Unescaped left brace in regex is illegal here in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/\${ <-- HERE ([^ \t=:+{}]+)}/ at /home/oystein/zynq/buildroot/output/microzed_linux_xilinx/host/usr/bin/automake line 3936.
autoreconf: /home/oystein/zynq/buildroot/output/microzed_linux_xilinx/host/usr/bin/automake failed with exit status: 255
package/pkg-generic.mk:206: recipe for target '/home/oystein/zynq/buildroot/output/microzed_linux_xilinx/build/alsa-lib-1.1.3/.stamp_configured' failed
make[1]: *** [/home/oystein/zynq/buildroot/output/microzed_linux_xilinx/build/alsa-lib-1.1.3/.stamp_configured] Error 1
Makefile:16: recipe for target '_all' failed
make: *** [_all] Error 2
Uncaught exception
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "build.py", line 191, in <module>
    build_target(args, catalog)
  File "build.py", line 89, in build_target
    subproc(argStr, cwd=args['outputDir'])

Looks like it is a known issue with automake:
raspberrypi/noobs#470

I tried to edit the automake file like described in the post but it seems the build process is cleaning the file on a new make.
Is it possible to update automake?