Re: aclocal --force

[Akim Demaille]

 adl> Touching aclocal.m4 invalidates Autom4te's cache.
 adl> Right now, autoreconf tries to prevent needless updates of
 adl> aclocal.m4 by instructing aclocal to output aclocal.m4t and
 adl> overwriting aclocal.m4 only if aclocal.m4t turns out to be
 adl> different.

 adl> Comparing the contents is not enough, because aclocal.m4 depends
 adl> on its *.m4 constituents.  If one of the *.m4 is younger than
 adl> aclocal.m4 and autoreconf decides not to update aclocal.m4, then
 adl> aclocal will be called again at `make' time (this in turn will
 adl> cause the other autotools to be rerun).

 adl> The following patch does what Akim and I have discussed this
 adl> weekend: implements the `avoid needless updates of aclocal.m4'
 adl> feature in aclocal itself, because only aclocal knows about
 adl> aclocal.m4's dependencies.

I like it, please install ;)

I was wondering: how about having .stamps contain the actually output?
I.e., how about having aclocal always create .stamps/aclocal.m4, and
cp it onto aclocal.m4 when needed?