The intent of commit 199f218bf431b77c12a728f7072bed1553a0f0af seems praiseworthy, but since 'all-am' is automatically added by Automake as a prerequisite of the 'install' target, its effect is to stop people running 'make install' as root: make install-am make[2]: Entering directory `/usr/src/libguestfs/x86_64-spindle/src' make -C ../generator stamp-generator make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/libguestfs/x86_64-spindle/generator' make[3]: `stamp-generator' is up to date. make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/libguestfs/x86_64-spindle/generator' *** Error: Don't run 'make' or 'make check' as root. make[2]: *** [checkroot] Error 1 make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/libguestfs/x86_64-spindle/src' make[1]: *** [install] Error 2 make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/libguestfs/x86_64-spindle/src' make: *** [install-recursive] Error 1 This seems... counterintuitive. Was that really the intent of this change? (And how did nobody notice it? I'm using Automake 1.11.1, but Automake has done this for a long, long time.)