Re: [PATCH] Fix dependence on computed configure variables.

[Eric Blake]

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[adding bug-gnulib, as this revisits the issue recently discussed about
how to track version information in builds]

According to Joel E. Denny on 7/26/2008 11:36 PM:
| I just pushed this change to Bison to fix dependents of PACKAGE_VERSION.
| Because Bison computes PACKAGE_VERSION using git-version-gen when autoconf
| runs, changes to PACKAGE_VERSION are signaled by changes to configure not
| configure.ac.
|
| Perhaps my change to the package.m4 target rule ought to be reflected in
| the Autotest documentation's recommendation.  Or is there a better way to
| handle this?

The better way to handle this is to replace any previous dependence on
configure.ac with a dependence on .version rather than configure; this is
already documented in git-version-gen.  For an example, that is how
autoconf does it in man/Makefile.am.  The idea here is that gnulib's
git-version-gen/GNUmakefile combo guarantees that .version is deleted
prior to any build where you care about accurate version information, and
for all other development builds, the cost of recompiling various files
just to pick up a version change outweighs the speed of building with
stale version information.

- --
Don't work too hard, make some time for fun as well!

Eric Blake             address@hidden
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