Re: [Bug-gnulib] Re: CVS Bug? or User error?

[Karl Berry]

    >My understanding is that if you had arranged for getdate.c to be newer
    >than getdate.y

FWIW, I sadly have to agree that it's better just to omit the rules for
rebuilding except with --enable-maintainer-mode.  The reason is that
importing/checking out from other source trees can easily lose time
stamps.  (It's worse for the autoconf-rerunning rules than yacc rules,
but the same principle.)  It's a big hassle in practice with no real
upside -- the extremely few people who actually want to modify a .y
source would have no problem saying --enable-maintainer-mode, I imagine.

I changed various Texinfo rebuilding rules to be
--enable-maintainer-mode for this reason.  It hasn't been a problem and
has stopped the infrequent but incessant reports about "I tried to make
texinfo after [importing into my source tree], but it ran autoconf and
now it doesn't work".

Just reporting my experience ...