The files man/*.1 are included in the tarballs. By the GNU Coding Standards they should be generated in the source directory. But this is not what happens: $ ./configure; make -k maintainer-clean $ ./bootstrap $ mkdir bb $ cd bb $ ../configure $ make $ ls -l ../man/*.1 ls: cannot access '../man/*.1': No such file or directory $ ls -l man/*.1 -rw-rw-r-- 1 bruno bruno 2245 21. Jul 21:12 man/cmp.1 -rw-rw-r-- 1 bruno bruno 6469 21. Jul 21:12 man/diff.1 -rw-rw-r-- 1 bruno bruno 2858 21. Jul 21:12 man/diff3.1 -rw-rw-r-- 1 bruno bruno 2869 21. Jul 21:12 man/sdiff.1 This patch fixes it. With it, the result is: $ ls -l ../man/*.1 -rw-rw-r-- 1 bruno bruno 2245 21. Jul 21:16 ../man/cmp.1 -rw-rw-r-- 1 bruno bruno 6469 21. Jul 21:16 ../man/diff.1 -rw-rw-r-- 1 bruno bruno 2858 21. Jul 21:16 ../man/diff3.1 -rw-rw-r-- 1 bruno bruno 2869 21. Jul 21:16 ../man/sdiff.1 $ ls -l man/*.1 ls: cannot access 'man/*.1': No such file or directory