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

[Richard Stallman]

    The method you described wasn't completely fleshed out, and left a few
    practical issues unaddressed.  Nevertheless, my original patch
    implemented it, or something very close to it,

It was not close at all.  Your first script actually ran the bootstrap
procedure.  That is very different from what I suggested.

    However, if we can come up with some precise description of how
    autogen.sh should behave, I'd be happy to implement it.

Here's the description I wrote before:

      I think it should create a file `must-bootstrap'.  Then
    the next `make all' run should notice the existence of must-bootstrap,
    and do a bootstrap automatically.

Could you be more specific about why you think that is hard?
It could be implemented inside the rule maybe-bootstrap.