bug#9106: 24.0.50; ./configure causes massive recompilation

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 22:58:48 -0700
> From: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
> CC: 9106@debbugs.gnu.org, bug-gnulib@gnu.org
> 
> On 07/19/2011 10:24 PM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > What I'm suggesting is to replace the last command ("mv $@-t $@") with
> > this:
> >
> >      move-if-change $@-t $@
> >
> > That's it.  Make will indeed cheerfully regenerate unistd.h-t
> 
> ... and alloca.h-t.  And getopt.h-t.  And the other ten .h-t files
> that are generated on typical platforms.

Yes.

> And this would occur every time one does a 'make', even when there's
> no real work to do.

This occurs already: these headers are regenerated every time I re-run
the `configure' script.  How is my suggestion worse than the current
situation?

> The unnecessary "make" actions would fill up people's screens,
> and would be confusing.

They fill up my screen already, as things are now.

> I'm afraid this cure would be worse than the disease.

I feel there's some kind of misunderstanding here, because with my
proposal, nothing will happen that doesn't already happen.  Perhaps
you could show in more detail which Make actions would happen that
doesn't happen now.