Re: [Bug-zile] Missing dependency for zile.1.in Makefile target

[Reuben Thomas]

Unfortunately, I've just worked out why zile.1.in did not depend on
zile$(EXEEXT). You are correct that it should, normally, but I have
made zile.1.in an EXTRA_DIST file so that help2man is not needed to
build Zile from a release tarball. If zile.1.in is made to depend on
zile$(EXEEXT), then it is always remade, since zile$(EXEEXT) is always
built. But when running make distcheck, zile.1.in is built under the
_build directory. However, it is not removed by make distclean, since
it is an EXTRA_DIST file, so make distcheck fails, because _build is
not left empty by make distclean, as it should be. This is a catch-22:
I cannot, in general, remove zile.1.in, in case I am doing a normal
build!

So the two solutions seem to be:

1. Require all users to install help2man. This would be a pity.

2. Require you to use touch to reset the timestamp on main.c, so that
zile.1.in is not rebuilt.

I would prefer 2, as it affects far fewer users.

This also leads to another question: what patch to main.c do you need
in the first place? I'm always keen to try to make Zile more portable,
and I believe that Debian, at least, does not need to patch the source
at all, so if I can help Gentoo avoid a patch, I'd be happy to.

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