On Sat, May 9, 2020 at 6:10 PM Karl Berry <k...@freefriends.org> wrote: > > Probably best to leave it, as is, and mark it as known-to-be-unused at > least via comment. > > How does the text below look for an explanation?
Very good! Thanks for dealing with this. Two suggestions below. > (By the way, I noticed that FileUtils.pm, unlike the other *.pm in > lib/Automake, doesn't have an =over 4 ... =back around all the other > items, causing pod2text to complain. I'll fix that too unless there is > some magical reason for it.) Sounds fine to fix that. Thanks! > --- a/lib/Automake/FileUtils.pm > +++ b/lib/Automake/FileUtils.pm > @@ -181,7 +181,20 @@ sub update_file ($$;$) > > =item C<up_to_date_p ($file, @dep)> > > -Is C<$file> more recent than C<@dep>? > +Is C<$file> strictly more recent than C<@dep>? > +If mtimes are equal, returns true. > + > +This function is not used anywhere in Automake. Where it is used is in Perhaps s/Where it is used is in/However, it @emph{is} used in/ also, s/subsecond/sub-second/ to pacify spell-checkers :-) > +C<autom4te>, which is part of Autoconf. And its use there poses a > +problem with respect to subsecond timestamps, as discussed at > +L<https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/automake-patches/2020-04/msg00000.html> > +(thread continues into May). The best approach seems to be to leave this > +function alone, and have C<autom4te> use a different test, one which is > +not part of Automake. > + > +Although we would like to remove this function from Automake, since it's > +not used, that would break older versions of Autoconf, which seems > +gratuitious. So we leave it, unchanged.