Re: distcheck does 'chmod a-w' - leads to mkdir "permission denied"

[Paul Smith]

On Fri, 2017-03-03 at 15:48 +0000, Paul Jakma wrote:
> make[4]: Entering directory 
> '/home/paul/code/quagga/quagga-1.2.0/_build/sub/doc'
>    MAKEINFO ../../../doc/quagga.info
> mkdir: cannot create directory ‘.am8211’: Permission denied
> could not open ../../../doc/quagga.texi: No such file or directory
> /bin/sh: line 16: cd: ../../../doc: No such file or directory
> ..
> $ cd doc # in the top-level repo
> $ make quagga.info
> make: 'quagga.info' is up to date.
> 
> Baffling?

Run make (in a remote directory freshly unpacked from your dist file)
with the "-d" flag (redirect it due to voluminous output) and it will
tell you exactly why it decided to run that recipe.

No doubt it depends on some other file which has an unexpected
timestamp.