make fails whenever petalinux get installed in a folder whose path doesn’t contain “2018.3” string. While the Vivado\SDx gui installer insert the release string in the application path by default, the petalinux installer doesn’t. So the check in checkenv is, in the end, worthless. By the way I suggest, for sdx and vivado, to use “app -verssion | grep release” command.
Unfortunately there is no known way to get the petalinux version.
Best regards