autogen.sh runs:
make -C man -f mans.mk nbd-server.1.sh.in nbd-server.5.sh.in nbd-client.8.sh.in nbd-trdump.1.sh.in nbdtab.5.sh.in
make -C systemd -f Makefile.am [email protected]
before running autoreconf -f -i. The first of those steps requires docbook2man installed, even if the manpages will ultimately end up disabled.
Please consider letting autoconf do substitution on the SGML files (e.g. nbd-client.8.sgml.in to nbd-client.8.sgml, rather than running docbook2man on nbd-client.8.in.sgml), and then running the docbook2man step (and the generation of the systemd service file) as part of the later make step. (configure could then look for docbook2man.)
In addition to avoiding the mandatory docbook2man dependency when disabling manpages in configure, this would also allow those build operations to happen in make where they can run in parallel as part of parallel make. And it would avoid needing makefiles already generated before running autogen.sh.