Bug#49702: latent bash bug in combination with make?

[Matthias Klose <doko@cs.tu-berlin.de>]

Package: bash
Version: 2.02.1-1.18

ii  bash            2.02.1-1.8     The GNU Bourne Again SHell
ii  libc6           2.1.2-10       GNU C Library: Shared libraries and timezone
ii  make            3.78.1-1       The GNU version of the "make" utility.

This report get's a little bit unspecific. I cannot reproduce this
behaviour on every i386 machine, but now I was able to reproduce it on 
the second machine. These bugs are triggered sometimes from the gcc
rules files. Basically, setting SHELL := /bin/bash -e and then
starting debian/rules results in a make failure for the first command
being executed (But the command itself is not executed); it does not
matter which command this is.:

clean:
        echo Hi
        rm -rf $(stampdir)

$ debian/rules clean
echo Hi
make: *** [clean] Error 1

I tried commenting out parts of the rules files, sometimes it helps,
sometimes not. Now I tried to compile a vanilla bash-2.03 and use this 
shell ... and it works. Tried to compile the current Debian bash, but
didn't succeed due to errors in the build process.

The only thing I changed on the system was an upgrade (new and updated 
packages from the weekend), so basically libc6 2.1.2-8 (or 9) was
replaced with -10.

Not sure where/how to further debug this. I could make available an
account on a machine where this bug can be reproduced.