R help - Dec 2009 - R CMD SHLIB requesting makefile. Is a makefile required?

A few years ago I used the following to compile a shared object that I
wanted to call from R and it worked just fine.
R CMD SHLIB -o ~/my_C/R.shared.so/cocite.mat.so cocite.mat.c
Now when it is executed?I receive the following error message:
make: *** No rule to make target `cocite.mat.o', needed by
`/home/mkimpel/my_C/R.shared.so/cocite.mat.so'.  Stop.

I've consulted R CMD SHLIB --help and R-exts.pdf and neither indicates
that a makefile is now required by R CMD SHLIB, yet Googling the error
message leads me to lots of threads regarding makefiles.

Has something changed? Am I doing something wrong? Following is my gcc
version and sessionInfo().
Thanks, Mark

kimpel-desktop ~/my_C: gcc --version
gcc (Ubuntu 4.4.1-4ubuntu8) 4.4.1
Copyright (C) 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
> sessionInfo()
R version 2.10.0 Patched (2009-10-27 r50222)
x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu

locale:
 [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C
 [3] LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8
 [5] LC_MONETARY=C              LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
 [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C
 [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C
[11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices datasets  utils     methods   base

Mark W. Kimpel MD ?** Neuroinformatics ** Dept. of Psychiatry
Indiana University School of Medicine

15032 Hunter Court, Westfield, IN ?46074

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