Created attachment 106025 [details] [review]
small diff

This problem has been fixed in the development version. The fix will be available in the next major software release. Thank you for your bug report.

http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/gnome-games?view=revision&revision=7436

I am unable to run make with this patch. Is it just me?

Doesn't build for me either...

The error I get is:
make[2]: *** No rule to make target `/glchess.in', needed by `glchess'.  Stop.

Which is from src/Makefile:
glchess.in: $(top_builddir)/config.status $(srcdir)/glchess.in.in

The problem is builddir is not specified on my system which is why $(builddir)/glchess.in expands to '/glchess.in'.

i think this is an automake issue
i'm using 1.10.1 and it works fine
this might be limited to 1.9 and lower

Current configure seems to require automake >= 1.9:
AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE([1.9 no-dist-gzip dist-bzip2 foreign])
(but I don't grok the autotools...)

Does anyone know a way to fix this for 1.9 and 1.10?

instead of

glchess: $(builddir)/glchess.in

it could be

glchess: $(top_builddir)/glchess/src/glchess.in

Fixed in SVN revision 7502. I heart automake. Thanks to all for thoughts on how to attack this. I don't think anyone really, truely understand how automake actually works ;).

i feel dumb

builddir always expands to .
so $(builddir)/glchess.in is just ./glchess.in
and by default, without some directory referenced, it's expected to be the current working directory

so $(top_builddir)/glchess/src doesn't even need to be there
it can just be

glchess: glchess.in

i overcomplicated things

Unovercomplicated things :)
http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/gnome-games?view=revision&revision=7611