diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index 04d0fd1fe6..c1d02f0449 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -1286,7 +1286,7 @@ SANITIZE_ADDRESS =
 # For the 'coccicheck' target; setting SPATCH_BATCH_SIZE higher will
 # usually result in less CPU usage at the cost of higher peak memory.
 # Setting it to 0 will feed all files in a single spatch invocation.
-SPATCH_FLAGS = --all-includes --patch .
+SPATCH_FLAGS = --all-includes
 SPATCH_BATCH_SIZE = 1
 
 include config.mak.uname
@@ -3131,7 +3131,8 @@ check: $(GENERATED_H)
 		limit='-n $(SPATCH_BATCH_SIZE)'; \
 	fi; \
 	if ! echo $(COCCI_SOURCES) | xargs $$limit \
-		$(SPATCH) --sp-file $< $(SPATCH_FLAGS) \
+		$(SPATCH) $(SPATCH_FLAGS) \
+		--sp-file $< --patch . \
 		>$@+ 2>$@.log; \
 	then \
 		cat $@.log; \