A user reported that 'make -q' didn't work: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.libidn.general/329
and I cannot seem to debug this properly. I suspect it has something to do with gnulib's GNUmakefile/maint.mk/cfg.mk, since coreutils 8.12 (as an example of another project using gnulib that I could think of) has the same issue. Some other autoconf/automake/libtool projects that don't use gnulib or gnulib's maintainer-makefile that I tested didn't have this issue. After tar + configure + make: jas@latte:~/src/coreutils-8.12$ LANG=C make -q make all-recursive make[1]: Entering directory `/home/jas/src/coreutils-8.12' Making all in lib make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1 make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/jas/src/coreutils-8.12' make: *** [all] Error 2 jas@latte:~/src/coreutils-8.12$ Any ideas? /Simon