Hi Nick. Thanks for chiming in, and for the detailed reply! On 01/09/2012 05:35 PM, Nick Bowler wrote: > Hello Jan, > > On 2012-01-09 17:23 +0100, Jan Engelhardt wrote: >> On Sunday 2012-01-01 10:24, Stefano Lattarini wrote: >>> On 12/31/2011 12:29 AM, Jan Engelhardt wrote: >>>> >>>> I have seen user-induced lines in Makefile.am like these in a handful >>>> of packages: > [...] >> For example libntlm [] in >> gl/Makefile.am: >> >> else >> byteswap.h: $(top_builddir)/config.status >> rm -f $@ >> endif > > This instance (presumably) comes from Gnulib's byteswap module. This > header is generated at make time based on stuff determined by configure: > so it needs to be regenerated if the package configuration changes. Or, > as in the part you quoted, it may need to be deleted if the configuration > changes such that the header is no longer necessary. Since config.status > is updated whenever configure is run, this dependency ensures that the > headers will be updated if the configuration is changed. This approach > is used throughout Gnulib. > I believe I remember a discussion on the gnulib list about this "trick", several months ago ... Ah-ah, found it: <> HTH, Stefano