make-3.82 NEWS question

[Warren Dodge]

In the NEWS file for make-3.82 is this info about the wildcard function


* WARNING: Future backward-incompatibility!
  Wildcards are not documented as returning sorted values, but up to and
  including this release the results have been sorted and some makefiles are
  apparently depending on that.  In the next release of GNU make, for
  performance reasons, we may remove that sorting.  If your makefiles
  require sorted results from wildcard expansions, use the $(sort ...)
  function to request it explicitly.


It says "Future" but I am seeing this behavior in 3.82. It that correct?

I built make-3.82 on this older system type

Linux zephyr 2.4.21-47.ELsmp #1 SMP Wed Jul 5 20:38:41 EDT 2006 i686 i686 i386 
GNU/Linux

It is running on this newer system type

Linux lwe127084 2.6.9-89.0.26.ELsmp #1 SMP Sun May 30 09:31:52 EDT 2010 i686 
i686 i386 GNU/Linux


This change is going to be a nightmare for us users. Things that have
worked "forever" now break. The last thing people want to do is edit
production code to fix things like this.

Would it be possible to make this a compile option to keep old
functionality or have to enable it to speed things up.