OPT_HANDLERS, Makefiles, and documentation

[Rik]

4/18/11

John,

Something is not quite right in the Makefile for the src directory, and I
can't pinpoint the issue so I'm writing you instead.

I recently updated mk-opts.pl at the top-level of the tree to change the
Texinfo documentation string for the option handlers.  The updated
timestamp mostly caused a rebuild of the affected files in liboctave/ and
src/ expect for the '*.df' files associated with the OPT_HANDLERS.  The
result is that the DOCSTRINGS file contains the old Texinfo information
from the now out-of-date .df file.  To resolve the situation I had to
remove the .df file and force it to be rebuilt.  For example, 'rm
src/DLD-FUNCTIONS/quad.df'

One thought I had was that the entire auto-building and the use of
mk-opts.pl could be junked in favor of ordinary source code checked into
Mercurial.  Yes, if we found a typo it would need to be changed in 5
places.  On the other hand, that seems easier than the current system
involving sh, perl, and Makefiles and these interfaces are very stable
since they are to legacy Fortran routines.

--Rik