I checked out the latest source and tried building it on my Chromebook (i.e., Debian 11 (bullseye)). The compile stopped when it tried to build the pdf of all the man pages:
make[1]: Entering directory '/home/rdgoulding/groff-git'
GROFF doc/groff-man-pages.pdf
gropdf:src/utils/addftinfo/addftinfo.1: fatal error: failed to open '/usr/share/ghostscript/9.27/Resource/Font/NimbusRoman-Italic'
make[1]: *** [Makefile:12695: doc/groff-man-pages.pdf] Error 1
make[1]: *** Deleting file 'doc/groff-man-pages.pdf'
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/rdgoulding/groff-git'
make: *** [Makefile:5701: all] Error 2
The odd thing is that I have ghostscript version 9.53.3 installed, not 9.27, and the font it can't find is at /usr/share/ghostscript/9.53.3/Resource/Font/NimbusRoman-Italic
R.
--
Robert Goulding
Director, John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values;
Director, Program in History and Philosophy of Science;
Assoc. Professor, Program of Liberal Studies,
Fellow, Medieval Institute,
University of Notre Dame.