Re: Testing automake on Cygwin 1.7

[Stefano Lattarini]

Hi Eric.

On Monday 28 November 2011, Eric Blake wrote:
> On 11/25/2011 12:00 PM, Stefano Lattarini wrote:
> > 
> >> Second is txinfo21, which stumbles because the directory timestamp
> >> is not properly updated when a file changes inside the dir.
> 
> POSIX permits, but does not require, a directory's timestamp to change
> just because a file in that directory was changed. That is, any test
> that relies on a directory's modification time always being reliable in
> relation to the timestamps of files within that directory is inherently
> non-portable.
> 
I'll keep this in mind in the future.  Still, the test case in question
doesn't truly rely on unspecified semantics you are referring to, since
the directory whose timestamp is tested is in fact removed and recreated
by the rules in `lib/am/texibuild.am'; see also this nice comment from
there:

  ## When --split (the default) is used, makeinfo will output a
  ## directory.  However it will not update the time stamp of a
  ## previously existing directory, and when the names of the nodes
  ## in the manual change, it may leave unused pages.  Our fix
  ## is to build under a temporary name, and replace the target on
  ## success.

Regards,
  Stefano