I would say that this thread went a little bit out of focus. Maybe it is allowed to add my $.02?
"Traditional" Make does a check like if timestamp(file1) > timestamp(file2) then rebuild file2 file1 The fundamental flaw in this is obvious: file1 can be replaced anytime by another file with an older timestamp than file2. The result is that file2 is not rebuilt, even though file1 has changed. As a workaround you have to touch file1 on checkout, _and_ you have to be sure that no builds are running. Both restrictions can become a huge problem when working with automatic builds in a large team with several parallel development branches. You get more builds than necessary (which implies more tests to be run), and everybody has to spend more time in waiting. Maybe you are used to these restrictions and don't consider it as a problem, or maybe you are simply not affected, but IMHO this is _highly_ painful. Of course you can always make it "work somehow" without touching Make. Surely I do not want you to drop the traditional timestamp check. But an optional checksum feature as suggested by Giuseppe would be a reasonable extension. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just needs to be better. Regards Harri _______________________________________________ Bug-make mailing list Bug-make@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-make