When attempting to compile arts HEAD checked out of CVS about 15 minutes ago, 
I get the following: 

g++ -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I/usr/local/src/kde-cvs/arts/soundserver -I.. 
-I/usr/local/src/kde-cvs/art
s/mcop -I/usr/local/src/kde-cvs/arts/flow -I../flow 
-DEXECUTE=\"/opt/kde-cvs/bin/artsd\" -I/opt/kde
-cvs/include -I/opt/qt-cvs/include -I/usr/X11R6/include  
-I/usr/local/src/kde-cvs/arts/libltdl  -DQ
T_THREAD_SUPPORT  -D_REENTRANT  -Wnon-virtual-dtor -Wno-long-long 
-Wbad-function-cast -Wundef -Wall
 -pedantic -W -Wpointer-arith -Wmissing-prototypes -Wwrite-strings -ansi 
-D_XOPEN_SOURCE=500 -D_BSD
_SOURCE -Wcast-align -Wconversion -fno-builtin -g -O2 -fno-exceptions 
-fno-check-new  -ftemplate-de
pth-99  -c -o soundserverv2_impl.o `test -f soundserverv2_impl.cc || echo 
'/usr/local/src/kde-cvs/a
rts/soundserver/'`soundserverv2_impl.cc
soundserverv2_impl.cc:34:25: artsversion.h: No such file or directory
make[2]: *** [soundserverv2_impl.o] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/kde-cvs/arts/soundserver'
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/kde-cvs/arts'
make: *** [all] Error 2

Now of course, if I go in by hand and do a "make artsversion.h", it goes ahead 
and creates it and then the second make succeeds successfully.