If a machine has no PCRE, grep fails to build grep on it du to -Werror=unused-variable with --enable-gcc-warnings. I found it on Fedora 21 (GCC 4.9.2). $ ./configure --enable-gcc-warnings $ make make all-recursive make[1]: Entering directory '/usr/src/gnu/grep-2.21' Making all in po make[2]: Entering directory '/usr/src/gnu/grep-2.21/po' make[2]: Nothing to be done for 'all'. make[2]: Leaving directory '/usr/src/gnu/grep-2.21/po' Making all in lib make[2]: Entering directory '/usr/src/gnu/grep-2.21/lib' make all-am make[3]: Entering directory '/usr/src/gnu/grep-2.21/lib' make[3]: Nothing to be done for 'all-am'. make[3]: Leaving directory '/usr/src/gnu/grep-2.21/lib' make[2]: Leaving directory '/usr/src/gnu/grep-2.21/lib' Making all in doc make[2]: Entering directory '/usr/src/gnu/grep-2.21/doc' make[2]: Nothing to be done for 'all'. make[2]: Leaving directory '/usr/src/gnu/grep-2.21/doc' Making all in src make[2]: Entering directory '/usr/src/gnu/grep-2.21/src' CC pcresearch.o pcresearch.c:43:12: error: 'empty_match' defined but not used [-Werror=unused-variable] static int empty_match[2]; ^ cc1: all warnings being treated as errors Makefile:1314: recipe for target 'pcresearch.o' failed make[2]: *** [pcresearch.o] Error 1 make[2]: Leaving directory '/usr/src/gnu/grep-2.21/src' Makefile:1254: recipe for target 'all-recursive' failed make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1 make[1]: Leaving directory '/usr/src/gnu/grep-2.21' Makefile:1195: recipe for target 'all' failed make: *** [all] Error 2