dejagnu "already configured"?

[Hugh Sasse Staff Elec Eng <hgs at dmu dot ac dot uk>]

I am getting the following error on building binutils from cvs:

running /bin/sh ../../../../src/dejagnu/example/calc/configure  --build=sparc-sun-solaris2.9 --host=sparc-sun-solaris2.9 --target=sparc-sun-solaris2.9 --with-gnu-as --with-gnu-ld --with-ld=/usr/local/bin/ld --with-gnu-ld --with-as=/usr/local/bin/as --with-gnu-as --prefix=/scratch/hgs/local --program-transform-name=s,y,y, --cache-file=../.././config.cache --srcdir=../../../../src/dejagnu/example/calc
loading cache ../.././config.cache
checking for a BSD compatible install... ../../../../src/dejagnu/example/calc/../../install-sh -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking whether gmake sets ${MAKE}... (cached) yes
configure: error: source directory already configured; run make distclean there first
configure: error: ../../../../src/dejagnu/example/calc/configure failed for example/calc
gmake: *** [configure-dejagnu] Error 1
+ exit 1


For more details than it is reasonable to post see:
http://www.eng.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~hgs/binutils-cvs-failure.txt
NOTE -- if you are reading this in the archives I will be
removing that file shortly. Summary: it is for a Sun Solaris9 system
with gcc 3.3.2 and building against binutils 2.12.1

Is there anything I have missed here?  Why is that already
configured when I did a make distclean and remove the build
directory completely before re-writing it?

        Thank you,
        Hugh