If you've tried to compile Perl on Ubuntu 6.10+, you probably have run into a problem with an unterminated quoted string when doing make depend. There's several things going on here and, luckily, there's a very simple workaround.

The root issue really is an unterminated quoted string in the makedepend script generated by configure, on line 106 (in my builds). The single-quote used by sed isn't terminated. (It's confusing because there are also double-quotes and backquotes on that line.)

/bin/bash is very willing to let that go, so nothing has broken in the past. However, 6.10+ changes the symlink for /bin/sh from /bin/bash to /bin/dash (Wikipedia page). /bin/dash is less forgiving, so the makedepend script fails.

The immediately workaround is to change the symlink for /bin/sh back to /bin/bash. I have done this on 7.04 and it works just fine.

I have x-posted this to p5p in the hopes that this will be fixed in 5.8.9 and future releases.