Re: compiling gettext on mac os x 10.5

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Aaron,

please don't top-post, and please keep the mailing list in Cc:, thanks.

* Simmons, Aaron wrote on Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 09:25:16PM CEST:
> I have the gettext 0.17 source in our svn.  When it gets checked out
> the files get today's date, which are of course different than the
> dates of the file inside the tarball...
> 
> Since you mentioned it, I tried building it directly from the tarball
> and its working.  But my svn copy isn't!

Good.

> Does this mean that the build checks for a specific hard-coded date
> for a file and triggers autoconf if the date is past that? Surely not!

No.  autoconf is triggered for example if the date of the configure
script is older than the date of one of the files that the script is
generated from: configure.ac, aclocal.m4, possibly other macro files.

This is all documented in the manuals:
<http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/html_node/Making-configure-Scripts.html>
<http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/html_node/Rebuilding.html>

Cheers,
Ralf