I've encountered this (I think spurious) failure while testing the latest
developement version of sed.
$ git describe
4.2-44-g607d56e
$ make check
...
PASS: help
make[3]: Entering directory `/devel/bleeding/src/sed/testsuite'
LC_ALL=C ../sed/sed --version 2>&1 | LC_ALL=C tr -d \\r> version.out
cmp version.good version.out
version.good version.out differ: byte 1, line 1
make[3]: *** [version] Error 1
make[3]: Leaving directory `/devel/bleeding/src/sed/testsuite'
FAIL: version
PASS: file
...
Attached are the files testsuite/version.{gin,good,out}. Let me know
if you need more details.