Re: Emacs in CVS as today does not build - emacs depends on *.elc, which cannot be built without emacs

[Richard Stallman]

    For the make-package script in the Mac OS X, it will run make bootstrap 
    if lisp/abbrev.elc is missing.

This sounds like what emacs/Makefile.in used to do.
We have changed it since.  Could you update your script?

    What would be the argument(s) against adding to the root Makefile a 
    dependency on a specific .elc file that would force "make bootstrap" if 
    starting from scratch?

It is a bad idea to do a boostrap if the user did not explicitly ask
for one.