bug#8365: 3 of 657 tests failed

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* Stefano Lattarini wrote on Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 02:54:36PM CEST:
> At this point I'm not anymore sure this is just a testsuite-related issue
> -- it seems like a genuine bug in Automake-generated remake rules.  WDYT?

No.  You were right originally.  The tests do need to $sleep.
Please commit your patch with all the sleeps in it (to maint),
but please also fix the wrong comments.

My thinko was the following: given targets A -> B -> C, and A is out of
date, after make updates A, it checks the time stamp again, even iff it
knows it has decided to update A.  When that time stamp is the same as
B, it won't update B.  This sequence shows the issue with high
probability, the second 'make' often won't update B nor A again:

cat > Makefile <<EOF
A: B; touch A
B: C; touch B
C: ; touch C
EOF
rm -f A B C; make; rm -f C; make


Introducing sleeps in aclocal, autoconf, or automake would be a serious
usability issue; I need to avoid falling into that misconception of mine
again.

Thanks for being persistent.

Cheers,
Ralf