Re: RFE: make automake's output deterministic

[Bruno Haible]

Hello Ralf,

> Thanks for the bug report, and a Happy New Year.

Thank you for processing it, and a happy and productive 2008.

> The patch below should do the trick, I think.

Yes, confirmed. Thanks!

> It would be nice to have
> a test to expose this to go along with this change if possible.  Can you
> provide a recipe to reproduce the ordering change?

On Linux/x86, with autoconf-2.61, m4-1.4.10, automake-1.10, the following
recipe does it for me:

$ cd /dev/shm
$ mkdir foo; cd foo
$ cat > configure.ac <<\EOF
AC_INIT([foo], [0.0])
AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE
AC_CONFIG_FILES([Makefile])
AC_OUTPUT
EOF
$ touch Makefile.am AUTHORS ChangeLog NEWS README
$ aclocal
$ autoconf
$ automake --gnu -a -c
configure.ac:2: installing `./install-sh'
configure.ac:2: installing `./missing'
Makefile.am: installing `./INSTALL'
Makefile.am: installing `./COPYING'
$ rm missing install-sh INSTALL COPYING ; automake --gnu -a -c
10 times -> 4 times first "installing `./install-sh'",
            6 times first "installing `./missing'".

Note that I have the following $HOME/.autom4te.cfg file:
==============================================
begin-language: "Autoconf"
args: --no-cache
end-language: "Autoconf"
begin-language: "Autoconf-without-aclocal-m4"
args: --no-cache
end-language: "Autoconf-without-aclocal-m4"
==============================================

Bruno