Re: Avoid certain spurious `testsuite' rebuilds

[Stepan Kasal]

Hello,

On Wed, Apr 05, 2006 at 04:26:22PM -0700, Paul Eggert wrote:
> Noah Misch <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > With this patch, mktests.sh runs for each edit in lib/autoconf/*.m4
> > but only touches output files that have changed.  This eliminates
> > the spurious rebuilds.
> 
> I've written my fair share of patches that do something similar, for
> other programs, and have often lived to regret it.  I'd rather avoid
> this sort of "file X is actually a time stamp for file Y" business
> unless the efficiency issue really is a major one.

I have created a variation of Noah's patch; please find it attached
below.

It doesn't use any stamp files.  The idea is simple: `testsuite' is
generated from handwritten *.at files and from Autoconf sources by
mktests.sh and Autom4te.

The generated *.at files are intermediate files, and the (primary)
make no longer uses them.

In order to avoid spurious rebuilds, mktests.sh doesn't touch *.at
files if they haven't changed (Noah's code), and a secondary make
is then called which decides whether an Autom4te run is necessary.

Paul, would you accept this patch?  (Post 2.60, of course.)

Have a nice day,
        Stepan

autoconf-20060409-testsuite.patch
Description: Text document