Do we really need -e "${CONFIGURESTAMPFILE}" check in autotools_preconfigure?

In some cases when do_configure is failing (but after creating e.g. .qmake.cache)
it would be better to start with clean B on 2nd attempt to configure it, but
CONFIGURESTAMPFILE wasn't created yet.

Does someone remember why we need to test CONFIGURESTAMPFILE existence first 
(was it only to prevent cat ${CONFIGURESTAMPFILE} to fail?)

autotools_preconfigure() {
        if [ -n "${CONFIGURESTAMPFILE}" -a -e "${CONFIGURESTAMPFILE}" ]; then
                if [ "`cat ${CONFIGURESTAMPFILE}`" != "${BB_TASKHASH}" -a "${S}" != "${B}" ]; then
                        echo "Previously configured separate build directory detected, cleaning ${B}"