Missing directory when building 8.2.3-base

I built the "-base" version of 8.2.3 today, for installation at a company
I'm helping out. The build (and later, the installation) gave me an error
about a missing directory "test/regress". IIRC I downloaded
ftp://ftp.us.postgresql.org/pub/mirrors/postgresql/source/v8.2.3/postgresql-base-8.2.3.tar.bz2

I worked around the problem by creating a directory src/test/regress
containing a Makefile with inert "all" and "install" targets. That was
enough to get a working installation.

Is this a known problem? Is there any test procedure that builds the
"base" distribution before release?

Jeroen