This has been broken for aeons but make 3.82 finally pointed out the problem.
--- ORBit-0.5.17/popt/intl/Makefile.in 1999-09-29 22:12:45.000000000 +0100
+++ ORBit-0.5.17/popt/intl/Makefile.in 2010-09-07 23:29:48.457109170 +0100
@@ -199,15 +199,8 @@
cd .. \
&& CONFIG_FILES=$(subdir)/$@ CONFIG_HEADERS= $(SHELL) ./config.status
-# The dependency for intlh.inst is different in gettext and all other
-# packages. Because we cannot you GNU make features we have to solve
-# the problem while rewriting Makefile.in.
-@GT_YES@intlh.inst: intlh.inst.in ../config.status
-@GT_YES@ cd .. \
-@GT_YES@ && CONFIG_FILES=$(subdir)/$@ CONFIG_HEADERS= \
-@GT_YES@ $(SHELL) ./config.status
-@GT_NO@.PHONY: intlh.inst
-@GT_NO@intlh.inst:
+.PHONY: intlh.inst
+intlh.inst:
# Tell versions [3.59,3.63) of GNU make not to export all variables.
# Otherwise a system limit (for SysV at least) may be exceeded.