Well all I can guess is there must be something wrong with your compiler or something messed up about your git pull/clone or some issue with the ./configure options you used.

The "die:" label has been there since 2011-11-24 (go to https://github.com/ckolivas/cgminer/blame/master/api.c to check for yourself)
Also the code compiles fine on quite a few architectures including xubuntu, fedora 16, debian, MinGW on windows
I've even just done another git pull and compiled it.

What git pull/clone command did you use and what ./configure command did you use?

If you pulled on top of an old version, make sure you './autogen.sh' './configure --xxx' and 'make clean' again before compiling.