Re: make it possible to avoid symlinks in coreutils' bootstrap

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* Paul Eggert wrote on Wed, Oct 11, 2006 at 08:32:53AM CEST:
> Ralf Wildenhues <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > Assume the first `make' causes some
> > object files to be updated, say, because of a previous `make clean',
> > or simply because they were out of date.  Those object files will then
> > have a timestamp that is newer than the versions of the gnulib files
> > that reside in the gnulib directory.  So after bootstrap, they may not
> > be remade although they should have been.
> 
> Yes, but exactly the same problem exists with symbolic links.

I don't see how.  The first `make' already sees the new files from the
gnulib tree, through the symlinks.

> And there are many similar problems, e.g., if 'bootstrap' modifies
> a makefile this means you really have to rebuild everything.

Certainly that's not the only problem.  The more likely offenders of
this (e.g., configmake.h) already depend on the makefile.

Cheers,
Ralf