A plain "./configure" on Debian GNU/Linux on ppc64:
[…]
config.status: error: in `/home/philipp/sdcc-trunk/device/lib/pic16':
config.status: error: Something went wrong bootstrapping makefile fragments
for automatic dependency tracking. If GNU make was not used, consider
re-running the configure script with MAKE="gmake" (or whatever is
necessary). You can also try re-running configure with the
'--disable-dependency-tracking' option to at least be able to build
the package (albeit without support for automatic dependency tracking).
See `config.log' for more details
configure: error: ./configure failed for device/lib/pic16