Looking at the end of PR10996 [1/4] (man7 Makefile.in changes)

[Zack Weinberg]

Kelley Cook <kcook34@ford.com> writes:

> The *.7 man pages (which include the GNU licenses) no longer are being
> generated.  This is due to attempting to use a generic makefile rule.
> Unfortunately, the file comes from $(docdir)/include not $(docdir), so
> the rule is wrong to start with.  Furthermore only one of the three .7
> files creates the same named man page as the source .texi file.
>
> So I broke out the rule into three parts.
>
> Bootstrapped i686-pc-cygwin (all languages, except ada)
> Also tested by deleting the doc directory and make generated-manpages as
> well as make install-man.
>
> OK to install?

Please instead try to get the generic rule to work properly.  I think
something like this ought to do it:

vpath %.texi $(docdir):$(docdir)/include

$(docobjdir)/gfdl.7: fdl.texi
$(docobjdir)/gpl.7: gpl.texi
$(docobjdir)/fsf-funding.7: funding.texi

$(docobjdir)/%.7:
        commands here

zw