Okay, so what I did was clone the git, then manuall download the .gitignore and .gitmodules.  I still couldn't get the git submodule init and git submodule update to work, so I looked at the .gitmodules file and found out which git it referred to, and went to sgminer/submodules and cloned the jannson git there.  Then you can autoreconf -i and the CFLAGS and the make.  It worked in Linux.  I guess the "git submodule init" and "git submodule update" essentially do what I did manually.  I'm just glad it worked.  I then zipped it up and sent it to the other 22 rigs and replaced the last sgminer5 version.  My connections to Nicehash were immediate that time, but I was rented out so it didn't matter.  Naturally, when the rental finished, they defaulted to my non-Nicehash pool because the nicehash pools were of course dead, despite being configured correctly with this:

{
"pools" : [
   {
      "url" : "stratum+tcp://r919.g56.rigs.eu.betarigs.com:4174",
      "user" : "mrbobc-919",
      "pass" : "x",
      "algorithm" : "marucoin-mod"
   },
   {
      "name" : "Nicehash_X13",
      "url" : "stratum+tcp://stratum.nicehash.com:4337",
      "user" : "1MmBUf6DKTQsNGBEyrsxrTFNCbCT1vtTEK",
      "pass" : "f0=0;f2=0;f3=6;f4=4;f5=0;f6=3.5;f7=12",
      "algorithm" : "marucoin-mod"
   },
   {
      "name" : "Nicehash_X11",
      "url" : "stratum+tcp://stratum.nicehash.com:4336",
      "user" : "1MmBUf6DKTQsNGBEyrsxrTFNCbCT1vtTEK",
      "pass" : "f0=0;f2=0;f3=6;f4=4;f5=0;f6=3.5;f7=12",
      "algorithm" : "darkcoin-mod"
   },
   {
      "name" : "Nicehash_X15",
      "url" : "stratum+tcp://stratum.nicehash.com:4339",
      "user" : "1MmBUf6DKTQsNGBEyrsxrTFNCbCT1vtTEK",
      "pass" : "f0=0;f2=0;f3=6;f4=4;f5=0;f6=3.5;f7=12",
      "algorithm" : "bitblock"
   },
   {
      "name" : "Nicehash_Nist5",
      "url" : "stratum+tcp://stratum.nicehash.com:4340",
      "user" : "1MmBUf6DKTQsNGBEyrsxrTFNCbCT1vtTEK",
      "pass" : "f0=0;f2=0;f3=6;f4=4;f5=0;f6=3.5;f7=12",
      "algorithm" : "talkcoin-mod"
   },
   {
      "name" : "Wafflepool_X11",
      "url" : "stratum+tcp://useast.wafflepool.com:3331",
      "user" : "1MmBUf6DKTQsNGBEyrsxrTFNCbCT1vtTEK",
      "pass" : "x",
      "algorithm" : "darkcoin-mod"
   }
   
],
"intensity" : "16",
"worksize" : "256",
"thread-concurrency" : "12239",
"gpu-threads" : "2",
"gpu-engine" : "1150",
"gpu-memclock" : "1425",
"failover-only" : true,
"no-pool-disable" : true,
"api-network" : true,
"api-listen" : true,
"api-port" : "4028",
"gpu-powertune" : "20"
}