gmake 3.77 and GHC Makefiles

[George Russell]

The recent version, 3.77, of gmake seems to be a bit too clever 
(or maybe too stupid) for GHC's device of not updating a .hi file 
which is identical to the last one generated.  It appears to me
as if gmake is saving on a call to fstat by assuming that .hi
has been updated even if it hasn't, and so it launches a totally
unnecessary series of compilations.  Has anyone got any ideas
about how to prevent this, short of not using gmake 3.77?