Below is a repost of the message I sent about the strange error message I was getting when trying to build my project on CentOS. I am a software developer and don't have time to compare distros. I am also not an autotools expert. The autotools files in my project were lmade by others. It builds on everything except CentOS. I also don't have the time to build a simple test case. That would probably be time-consuming. The only thing I can do is explain how to reproduce the error. However, this would be time-consuming for anyone trying to do so. Sorry, I think I will just have to move to another distro, even Cygwin, for C development. That is a shame, because Centos is great in other respects. ----- Forwarded message from "John J. Boyer" <john.boyer at abilitiessoft.com> ----- Subject: Strange autotools error From: "John J. Boyer" <john.boyer at abilitiessoft.com> Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 00:08:09 -0500 To: centos at centos.org I am using CentOS 5.6, autoconf 2.59 and automake 1.9.6. I run an autogen script which cleans all autotools files and then installs new ones. If the appliction has no dependencies running configure, make and make install works fine. However if it has dependencies I get the messages "Creating Makefile" and "Could not find input file Makefile". I've herd that I need another development package. What is it? Or what causes these contradictory messages? I must say that I have encountered this sort of problem only on CentOS. Thanks, John -- John J. Boyer; President, Chief Software Developer Abilitiessoft, Inc. http://www.abilitiessoft.com Madison, Wisconsin USA Developing software for people with disabilities ----- End forwarded message ----- -- John J. Boyer; President, Chief Software Developer Abilitiessoft, Inc. http://www.abilitiessoft.com Madison, Wisconsin USA Developing software for people with disabilities ----- End forwarded message ----- -- John J. Boyer; President, Chief Software Developer Abilitiessoft, Inc. http://www.abilitiessoft.com Madison, Wisconsin USA Developing software for people with disabilities