This is in preparation for follow-on work where we'll extract the
compiler used from the CMakeCache rather than from the --cc
command line option. For that to work, however, the configure step
has to be run before the first time self._get_cc_info() gets called.
This also simplifies the need-to-configure logic a bit.
I consider if not exists: create an anti-pattern, just do mkdir_p() it'll be fine if the directory already exists.