diff --git a/config/lyxinclude.m4 b/config/lyxinclude.m4
index db31d5dd59..1480fe188a 100644
--- a/config/lyxinclude.m4
+++ b/config/lyxinclude.m4
@@ -644,3 +644,24 @@ AC_DEFUN([LYX_SET_VERSION_INFO],
  AC_SUBST(LYX_DIR_VER,"$lyx_dir_ver")
  AC_SUBST(LYX_USERDIR_VER,"$lyx_userdir_ver")
 ])
+
+# AM_PYTHON_CHECK_VERSION(PROG, VERSION, [ACTION-IF-TRUE], [ACTION-IF-FALSE])
+# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+# Copied from autoconf 2.68, added a check that python version is < 3.0
+# Run ACTION-IF-TRUE if the Python interpreter PROG has version >= VERSION.
+# Run ACTION-IF-FALSE otherwise.
+# This test uses sys.hexversion instead of the string equivalent (first
+# word of sys.version), in order to cope with versions such as 2.2c1.
+# This supports Python 2.0 or higher. (2.0 was released on October 16, 2000).
+AC_DEFUN([AM_PYTHON_CHECK_VERSION],
+ [prog="import sys
+# split strings by '.' and convert to numeric.  Append some zeros
+# because we need at least 4 digits for the hex conversion.
+# map returns an iterator in Python 3.0 and a list in 2.x
+minver = list(map(int, '$2'.split('.'))) + [[0, 0, 0]]
+minverhex = 0
+maxverhex = 50331648 # = 3.0.0.0
+# xrange is not present in Python 3.0 and range returns an iterator
+for i in list(range(0, 4)): minverhex = (minverhex << 8) + minver[[i]]
+sys.exit(sys.hexversion < minverhex or sys.hexversion >= maxverhex)"
+  AS_IF([AM_RUN_LOG([$1 -c "$prog"])], [$3], [$4])])