Re: VCSWITNESS = fail ** 2

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Sun, 12 Jan 2014 11:45:20 -0500
> From: "Eric S. Raymond" <address@hidden>
> Cc: address@hidden
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden>:
> > Shouldn't that be
> > 
> >       VCSWITNESS="$vcswitness"
> > 
> > instead?
> 
> No. You're in a Makefile context.  The $$ needs to be doubled or
> it won't be passed to the shell.  I tested this.

Right, the problem was elsewhere.  This fixed it, AFAICS:

-       vcswitness='$$(srcdir)/../'$$dirstate;                          \
+       vcswitness='$(srcdir)/../'$$dirstate;                           \

> > That possibility was considered and rejected, for the reasons that
> > Stefan explained. 
> 
> I have not seen that explanation.

Here it is:

> - "make autoloads" causes an undesirable re-dump even when no autoload 
> changed.
> - for that reason "autoloads" is not in the dependencies and is not
>   always run.
> 
> So the vcswitness is a completely opportunistic hack which forces
> a "make autoloads" every once in a while.

> >                 So you have just made things worse, not better.
> 
> The code wasn't working, so deleting it didn't leave us any worse
> off.

The situation with refreshing loaddefs.el became worse, see above.