8.2.1 Failure following missing check

The Makefile produced by ./configure sometimes gets confused into thinking that it needs to recreate one or more of the GNU Autotools build files such as aclocal.m4, config.h.in, configure, or Makefile.in. A symptom of this confusion is an error message following an invocation of the missing script:

$ make
cd . && /bin/sh ./config.status ncptl.h
config.status: creating ncptl.h
config.status: ncptl.h is unchanged
cd . && /bin/sh /home/me/conceptual-1.5.1b/missing --run autoheader

The source of the problem is usually an incongruous timestamp on some file relative to that of some other file. Unfortunately, identifying the files in question can be difficult. The quick fix is to edit the missing script, putting ‘exit 0’ at the beginning of the file, right after the ‘#! /bin/sh’ line. This tells the Makefile that none of the GNU Autotools build files need to be recreated.