Hi Bob - (sorry for the delayed reply) On an OpenIndiana system without the GNU utilities ... Usage: rm [-cFdfirRuv] file ...]
So, it seems that system's rm does not accept "rm -f" (with no file operands)? (I don't have access to any such system to check.) If so, it seems the error message is correctly reporting the state of things, including the possible workaround, so I don't see anything to do? Closing this now. Feel free to reopen (or just reply) if there is something more automake should be doing. Thanks for the report. -k