A recent update of gawk now fails at do_install when it tries to execute this:

make[4]: Entering directory '/mnt/home/paul/poky/build/tmp/work/corei7-64-poky-
linux/gawk/4.1.1-r0/build/extension'
for i in filefuncs.la fnmatch.la fork.la inplace.la ordchr.la readdir.la readfi
le.la revoutput.la revtwoway.la rwarray.la testext.la time.la ; do \
        rm -f /usr/lib/gawk/$i ; \
done
rm: cannot remove '/usr/lib/gawk/filefuncs.la': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove '/usr/lib/gawk/fnmatch.la': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove '/usr/lib/gawk/fork.la': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove '/usr/lib/gawk/inplace.la': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove '/usr/lib/gawk/ordchr.la': Permission denied
....
rm: cannot remove '/usr/lib/gawk/testext.la': Permission denied
rm: cannot remove '/usr/lib/gawk/time.la': Permission denied
Makefile:1235: recipe for target 'install-data-hook' failed

Note the "rm -f /usr/lib/gawk/$i" -- is going right at the build host files, and hence the -EPERM (rightly so!).

The reason that this does not fail on _all_ hosts is that there _has_ to be those files there to begin with, as "rm -f /usr/lib/gawk/some_nonexistent_file" is not an error, and hence this won't fail on ubuntu 14.10 for example.

It fails for me because my build machine is itself running on a build of yocto, and hence we see this host contamination issue clearly, as the gawk libraries are installed to the same path.