Each time you update or checkout from CVS, you are strongly encouraged to ensure all previous object files are removed to avoid internal inconsistency in Asterisk. Normally, this is automatically done with the presence of the file .cleanme . If you remove .cleanme, a 'make clean' will not be automatically done before the build. The .cleanme is automatically checked out with each cvs update or 'make update' that is run, and removed after the first build after the update or checkout, so there is normally no need to remove the file.