bug#25360: File mode specification errors during building

[Phillip Lord]

Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> writes:

> Phillip Lord wrote:
>
>> The other would be just to stop generating CTLau.el and
>> tstang-b5.el. Neither of the files from which they are generated have
>> been materially changed in since 2001, and CTLau.html apparently does
>> not exist any more in its source location. Deleting them, and adding
>> CTLau.el as source would solve the problem and remove a step from the
>> build.
>
> For legal reasons, we need to distribute the "real" source.

That's true, but not relevant in this case. The source is just the
preferred form for editing or updatable. Given that CTLau.html is no
longer being distributed from it's original source and is not,
therefore, updatable from that source, either form would work for
editing.

> (It also seems odd if the solution to a problem caused by removing a
> generated file from the repository is... to add generated files to
> the repository.)

No, that's not what I am suggesting. There is no point generating a
file from a source file if the source file never changes (it hasn't done
for 15 years) and if the generated file is always the same. It seems
worth doing independent of this bug.

Still, it's an independent issue, I shall see if I can figure the source
of the problem otherwise.

Phil