This is kind of unusual. I'm seeing it under Debian 7 on a ci20 mipsel dev-board when building/installing Git 2.12.2: ... 317 translated messages. GEN gitk-wish 307 translated messages. SUBDIR perl chmod: changing permissions of `blib/lib': Operation not permitted chmod: changing permissions of `blib/arch': Operation not permittedmake[2]: *** [blib/lib/.exists] Error 1 make[2]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs.... make[2]: *** [blib/arch/.exists] Error 1 chmod: changing permissions of `blib/arch/auto/Git': Operation not permitted make[2]: *** [blib/arch/auto/Git/.exists] Error 1 chmod: changing permissions of `blib/lib/auto/Git': Operation not permitted make[2]: *** [blib/lib/auto/Git/.exists] Error 1 make[1]: *** [all] Error 2 make: *** [all] Error 2 SUBDIR git-gui SUBDIR gitk-git ... When I check permissions: $ ls -Al git-2.12.2/perl/blib/bin/ total 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Apr 3 05:06 .exists It appears one of the Git processes is creating the directory structure git-2.12.2/perl/... It also appears to be doing it under sudo/root since I build under my account. Jeff