I tracked this build problem of mine down. I expect others will experience it, too, hence this posting. If you're building from clean, you won't have this problem.
Mark Mitchell's @file documentation change adds a @set directive to gcc-vers.texi in the build directory, but that file only depends on DEV-PHASE and BASE-VER, so it will never be correctly rebuilt using the new make rule. Just deleting it will remedy the problem. Cheers, Ben