I found the culprit: I had 

export GREP_OPTIONS='--color=always'

in my `.zshrc` file and that mangled the .mdd file names.

`make` now succeeds and so does `make check`. :)

On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 9:33 AM Marlon Richert <marlon.richert@gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 8:50 PM Bart Schaefer <schaefer@brasslantern.com> wrote:
I meant that after "make realclean" you need to start all the way back
at running Util/preconfig and configure.  Did you?

Yes, I did the following:

% make realclean
% Util/preconfig
% configure
% make

 
It appears for example that the commands to create signames.c are not
being executed for your build, nor is anything else that employs
$(AWK) (which my configure pass assigns AWK = mawk).

I uninstalled `gawk`, to see if that makes any difference, then ran the steps above again, but `make` still fails:

cd .. && /bin/sh $top_srcdir/Src/mkmakemod.sh Src Makemod
creating Src/Makemod.in
config.status: creating Src/Makemod
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/make -f Makemod prefix='/usr/local' exec_prefix='/usr/local' bindir='/usr/local/bin' libdir='/usr/local/lib' MODDIR='/usr/local/lib/zsh/5.8.0.2-dev' infodir='/usr/local/share/info' mandir='/usr/local/share/man' datadir='/usr/local/share' fndir='/usr/local/share/zsh/5.8.0.2-dev/functions' htmldir='/usr/local/share/zsh/htmldoc' runhelpdir='/usr/local/share/zsh/5.8.0.2-dev/help' CC='gcc' CPPFLAGS='' DEFS='-DHAVE_CONFIG_H' CFLAGS='-Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -O2' LDFLAGS='-Wl,-x' EXTRA_LDFLAGS='-rdynamic' DLCFLAGS='-fno-common' DLLDFLAGS='-bundle -flat_namespace -undefined suppress' LIBLDFLAGS='' EXELDFLAGS='' LIBS='-liconv -ldl -lncurses -lm  -lc' DL_EXT='so' DLLD='gcc' AWK='awk' ANSI2KNR=': ansi2knr' YODL=': yodl ' YODL2TXT=': yodl2txt' YODL2HTML=': yodl2html' FUNCTIONS_INSTALL='' tzsh='zsh' prep
echo 'timestamp for *.mdd files' > ../Src/modules.stamp
rm -f stamp-modobjs.tmp
mv: rename stamp-modobjs.tmp to stamp-modobjs: No such file or directory
Updated `stamp-modobjs'.
gcc -c -I. -I../Src -I../Src -I../Src/Zle -I.  -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -O2  -o main.o main.c
main.c:30:10: fatal error: 'zsh.mdh' file not found
#include "zsh.mdh"
         ^~~~~~~~~
1 error generated.
make[2]: *** [main.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [main.o] Error 2
make: *** [all] Error 1