make -j dep silently fails at inference/dimmwitted

[shengc]

test -z "/home/shengc/build/deepdive/inference/dimmwitted/lib/tclap/lib/pkgconfig" || /bin/mkdir -p "/home/shengc/build/deepdive/inference/dimmwitted/lib/tclap/lib/pkgconfig"
 /usr/bin/install -c -m 644 'tclap.pc' '/home/shengc/build/deepdive/inference/dimmwitted/lib/tclap/lib/pkgconfig/tclap.pc'
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/shengc/build/deepdive/inference/dimmwitted/lib/tclap-1.2.1'
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/shengc/build/deepdive/inference/dimmwitted/lib/tclap-1.2.1'
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/shengc/build/deepdive/inference/dimmwitted/lib/tclap-1.2.1'

shengc@~ dimmwitted $ echo $?
2
shengc@~ dimmwitted $ uname -a
Linux 2.6.32-696.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Feb 21 00:53:17 EST 2017 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

This is bad as if it went through, yet the return code clearly shows it failed. Worse, I cannot find out why it failed.