Hi Paul, thanks for the reply!
Is that directory searchable, readable, writeable? Does its file system have enough free space? Any problems in that area could cause the symptoms you're describing.
I am pretty sure, that these issues are not the reason, as it works on the Mac of one of my users with my old code base, but not with the new one. Investigating the generated code, I recognized that the old tarball was generated with autoconf 2.69, the new one with 2.71.
What happens if you apply the patch proposed here? https://lists.gnu.org/r/bug-make/2022-10/msg00064.html
As I explained, I don't think this is the reason, more a autoconf regression. I would love to test your patch, but this sounds like a mayor headache doing so on a CI runner.
Kind regards, Christoph -- L'enjeu est de bâtir la France de nos enfants, pas de ressasser la France de notre enfance. [Emmanuel Macron, 2022]