'Makefile' now depends on $(VERSION_FROM)?

[Ken Williams]

Hey,

Between -r1.107 and -r1.108, the VERSION_FROM file was added as a dependency to the Makefile. This is kind of a pain - in fact, it's a well-known, documented pain:

The file named in VERSION_FROM is not added as a depen-
dency to Makefile. This is not really correct, but it
would be a major pain during development to have to
rewrite the Makefile for any smallish change in that
file. If you want to make sure that the Makefile con-
tains the correct VERSION macro after any change of the
file, you would have to do something like

depend => { Makefile => '$(VERSION_FROM)' }

(from the MakeMaker POD documentation)


So, maybe this could be removed, using the following patch?

===================================================================
RCS file: /home/schwern/cvs/ExtUtils-MakeMaker/lib/ExtUtils/MM_Unix.pm,v
retrieving revision 1.140
diff -u -r1.140 MM_Unix.pm
--- lib/ExtUtils/MM_Unix.pm 24 Dec 2002 04:47:08 -0000 1.140
+++ lib/ExtUtils/MM_Unix.pm 20 Jan 2003 06:09:06 -0000
@@ -2886,7 +2886,7 @@
push @m, q{
# We take a very conservative approach here, but it\'s worth it.
# We move Makefile to Makefile.old here to avoid gnu make looping.
-$(FIRST_MAKEFILE) : Makefile.PL $(CONFIGDEP) $(VERSION_FROM)
+$(FIRST_MAKEFILE) : Makefile.PL $(CONFIGDEP)
$(NOECHO) echo "Makefile out-of-date with respect to $?"
$(NOECHO) echo "Cleaning current config before rebuilding Makefile..."
$(NOECHO) $(RM_F) $(MAKEFILE_OLD)
===================================================================

Alternatively, it could be fixed so that the dependency is really on the version number, not the file. But that would be quite a bit more work.

-Ken