Description:

From the man page for less: "Otherwise, less looks in a standard place for the system-wide lesskey file: On Unix systems, the system-wide lesskey file is /usr/local/etc/sysless. (However, if less was built with a different sysconf directory than /usr/local/etc, that directory is where the sysless file is found.)"

The package is currently built with the --prefix=/usr which forces less to look for sysless in /usr/etc/. I tested this and it does work, however, there isn't supposed to be a /usr/etc/ directory according to the FHS (http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#USRLOCALLOCALHIERARCHY).

Additional info:
* package version(s)
* config and/or log files etc.

Considering you're putting the binaries in /bin and /usr/bin, perhaps --prefix=/. would make more sense? or perhaps one of the more specific overrides such as --sysconfdir=/. (note, I'm using /. because the configure script appends strings starting with a /). /etc/sysless would be consistent with the rules of FHS.

Steps to reproduce:

(login as root)
mkdir /usr/etc
lesskey -o /usr/etc/sysless -
#env
LESS=-R
^D
/bin/ls --color=always -la /etc | less

This should show you the colorized ls output even inside less (because of -R). If you then do:
rm /usr/etc/sysless
rmdir /usr/etc
/bin/ls --color=always -la /etc | less

You should see the ANSI color codes embedded in the ls output (no -R option).