As usual, after I complain about something, I find a way to do it. It is still mysterious: - if I install the November-2003-2.src rpm and then I do "rpmbuild -bc <the spec file>" THEN hugs consents to build. - after that, I have to edit the src/Makefile in order to control where it will install the lot, and then I need to export HUGSDIR in order to make it run from there, but it seems to work. If I just install the above source rpm and then cd to the untarred tree and try configure with the same arguments (as posted by rpmbuild -bc ), it still fails in the same way as it did before. What is the correct way to do this? I'm pretty sure it is not what I do... please enlighten, yours truly, Victor Secarin