We don't seem to set DESTDIR when running 'make install'. Instead, the %makeinstall macro overrides a bunch of the standard directories that autoconf sets. With openconnect configured with %configure --htmldir=%{_docdir}/%{name}-%{version} ...installation fails, because it ends up trying to install into the root instead of into $RPM_BUILD_ROOT. If we were using DESTDIR for installation, this would have worked fine... isn't that what DESTDIR is *for*? I've worked around it by setting --htmldir='${datadir}/doc/%{name}-%{version}', so that $datadir is expanded by make at 'make install' time, and does pick up the value that's overridden by %makeinstall. But that doesn't seem right...
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Guidelines#Why_the_.25makeinstall_macro_should_not_be_used All current Fedora versions support %make_install macro which does the "right thing": %make_install %{__make} install DESTDIR=%{?buildroot}
WONTFIX, like noted %makeinstall is plain broken and only kept around for backwards compatibility, new packages shouldn't use it at all so there's little reason to "fix" it to work with newer auto*tools.