On Wed, Apr 05, 2006 at 04:26:22PM -0700, Paul Eggert wrote: > Noah Misch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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 do agree with that general sentiment. Currently, we end up rebuilding `testsuite' whenever it it becomes out of date with respect to any of lib/autoconf/*.m4. Whenever one of those files changes, we rebuild all of tests/ac*.at, and then rebuild `testsuite' itself. Most changes to the m4 sources change the generated test cases, so most of these rebuilds aren't necessary. On my middle-aged PC running GNU/Linux, rebuilding `testsuite' takes 22 seconds. To me, saving that 22 second delay before I can run a test case after editing Autoconf sources is worth this amount of Makefile pain. What do you think?
