GNU Hello builds its manpage (which it dists) by building and running
the binary and capturing its --help output.
This is quite common (among GNU packages anyway). So it is not
surprising Jim (hi Jim) committed a general solution.
A blanket depend on $(BUILT_SOURCES) for all automake-using projects
seems to be much too large of a hammer to solve that specific problem.
I tend to agree, but at this point I would not want to create an
incompatibility by undoing it. Instead, I guess a new option (for
AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS) would be needed. A patch would be welcome.
Jim, maybe you have other/more ideas ... --thanks, karl.
