automake --verbose --warnings=all --add-missing --copy Since you're talking about cron, I'm guessing the terminal output is being redirected to a file? Because if it's going to an actual tty, that can consume a surprising amount of time.
Is there a way to speed 'automake' up? Only real idea I have is to run automake under the Perl profiler and see what comes up. As in, install Devel::NYTProf from CPAN and then run perl -d:NYTProf /path/to/automake/executable Best, Karl