RFE: make automake's output deterministic

[Bruno Haible]

Hi,

When automake is installing files, it does so in a non-deterministic order.
For example, in the same situation, sometimes "automake -a" outputs

configure.in:5: installing `./config.sub'
configure.in:3: installing `./install-sh'
configure.in:3: installing `./missing'
configure.in:5: installing `./config.guess'

and sometimes it outputs

configure.in:5: installing `./config.guess'
configure.in:3: installing `./install-sh'
configure.in:3: installing `./missing'
configure.in:5: installing `./config.sub'

I'm using a program called 'rerun' that helps me monitor the long output
of automake/autoconf/autopoint/gnulib-tool/etc. tools. It stores the output
of a run in a hidden file and, at the next run, shows only the diffs between
the last run and the current run. So it produces diffs like this for me:

@@ -60,10 +1686,10 @@
 Copying file po/insert-header.sin
 Copying file po/quot.sed
 Copying file po/remove-potcdate.sin
-configure.in:5: installing `./config.sub'
+configure.in:5: installing `./config.guess'
 configure.in:3: installing `./install-sh'
 configure.in:3: installing `./missing'
-configure.in:5: installing `./config.guess'
+configure.in:5: installing `./config.sub'
 checking for a BSD-compatible install... /packages/gnu/bin/install -c
 checking whether build environment is sane... yes
 checking for a thread-safe mkdir -p... /packages/gnu/bin/mkdir -p

These diffs distract the attention from the real changes.

Can automake be made to use a deterministic hash table or sort the list of
files before processing it?

Bruno