Re: AC_CONFIG_HEADERS vs. AC_CONFIG_FILES

[David Fang]

> >     What I'd like is AC_CONFIG_FILES to also perform a difference
> > check on the output files before overwriting them, just the way
> > AC_CONFIG_HEADERS does.  (Is this a safe and easy request to accommodate?)
>
> Maybe you can have an intermediate file created from config.status
> (AC_CONFIG_FILES), and then use move-if-change to the header, in
> conjunction with a stamp file.  I'm not sure whether there are make
> implementations that don't cope well with this scheme, nor whether
> that is due to bugs in them.

Hi,
        I tried my own AC_CONFIG_FILES like this:

AC_CONFIG_FILES([foo.h:foo.h.in],
[
        dnl ... create foo.h.tmp from foo.h.in
        dnl ... move-if-change foo.h.tmp foo.h
]
)

However, the configure process would always *first* clobber
foo.h from foo.h.in before executing any of my own commands,
thus rendering the move-if-change useless (always finds never changed).
        Is this what you meant?  Admittedly, I'm sure how to use a
stamp-file in this case (I've only hacked my own stamp schemes for
completely different situations in Makefiles).

David Fang