This is visible in the output: 0:00.81 checking for a shell... /bin/sh 0:00.86 checking for host system type... x86_64-pc-linux-gnu 0:00.86 checking for target system type... x86_64-pc-linux-gnu 0:00.91 checking for a shell... /bin/sh 0:00.96 checking for host system type... x86_64-pc-linux-gnu 0:00.96 checking for target system type... x86_64-pc-linux-gnu 0:01.00 checking whether cross compiling... no 0:01.07 checking for vcs source checkout... git 0:01.07 checking whether cross compiling... no The root cause is the need_help_dependency argument to some of the functions in configure/__init__.py. I think those should be removed and everything related to that should be done in lint.py.

Worth noting, this is only the visible part of the iceberg. Many depends functions don't print anything and are executed twice too.

It turns out all the changes related to --help linting in lint.py make them unnecessary, and we still can detect missing --help arguments without them, per test_lint.py. On the flip side, keeping those need_help_dependency arguments makes some functions executed twice because some memoized functions end up being called for both cases need_help_dependency=True and need_help_dependency=False.