[...] It is straightforward to achieve a similar result with a portable makefile by using a dedicated witness file, for example (totally untested):configure.stamp: configure.ac autoconf -o configure.new cmp configure.new configure >/dev/null 2>&1 \ || mv -f configure.new configure echo >configure.stamp configure: configure.stamp
First of all, thanks to Nick Bowler and Ben Boeckel for the extra information. I suspected that something like that should be doable, but I did not have the right details.
As Nick says you can get something "kinda-sorta" similar with "witness" files (I call these "sentinel" files but there's no one accepted term that I'm aware of). This does work, if you get it right, but there are some mildly annoying UI/QoI issues you have to be willing to live with.
Would you care to elaborate about those "UI/QoI issues"? I am no expert in this regard, but it looks doable. After all, Autoconf/Automake completely control the makefile generation and the tools which trigger a rebuild of 'configure' and 'Makefile' when you modify configure.ac and Makefile.am. If implemented correctly, the user wouldn't really notice, or have I missed something? Regards, rdiez
