RFR: JDK-8196356: Changes to m4 files don't trigger autoconf execution at build time

[Magnus Ihse Bursie]

On 2018-02-10 09:12, Alan Bateman wrote:
> On 08/02/2018 17:49, Erik Joelsson wrote:
>> The check for when to generate the generated configure script is not 
>> working quite as expected. It currently only compares timestamps if 
>> the local repository has any local changes in the make/autoconf 
>> directory. This used to make sense when we had a committed generated 
>> script, but now we actually do need to regenerate any time an input 
>> file is newer than the generated script.
>>
>> Bug: https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8196356
> In addition to `hg status` showing no changes, I think it will 
> continue to confuse people to generate it into a hidden directory. Was 
> there any consideration to generating into a regular directory?

Why would hidden files be confusing? Or, rephrased, how is this any more 
confusing than other hidden directories, such as .idea or .jib? I 
modelled the behaviour on jib. In fact, I was considering using the same 
directory (.jib), but since the name was so specialized, it felt like 
misusing it. That's why I gave it a more general name. (In fact, I 
believe, if .build had been present when jib was created, it would have 
used that instead of creating the specialized .jib directory).

/Magnus