Subject: Re: bug#22213: 24.5; please allow specification or elimination of timestamp in autoloads

From: Stefan Monnier <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Dec 2015 20:54:12 -0500

> A question about the timestamps in loaddefs files:
> Why do we need to store the last modtime for each input file?
> Why can't we just compare current modtime of input file against that of
> the loaddefs file itself? Is there a reason not to trust the latter?

Not sure, to tell you the truth.  Given the time it takes to generate
the loaddefs.el file, there's definitely a chance/risk that the file
gets modified between the time it's read by autoloads.el and the time
the corresponding loaddefs.el is written.

Not sure how serious this risk is, tho.  Worth a try.
What I suggested for the "reproducible build" was to do something
simpler (in terms of safety of the change): just strip the comments from
loaddefs.el during "make install".

        Stefan