Subject: version.texi UPDATED field does not account for timezone; can cause unnecessary documentation rebuilds, which could fail

From: Ryan Schmidt <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2021 06:01:44 -0500

The method by which automake decides to regenerate version.texi and thereby to regenerate texinfo-based documentation is flawed because it does not account for the fact that the user's timezone may be different from the developer's timezone. The version.texi UPDATED and UPDATED-MONTH fields do not specify a timezone. If configure has been modified and if the user's timezone is sufficiently different from the developer's, then UPDATED or less frequently UPDATED-MONTH may change even though the texinfo sources' timestamps have not, which will cause an unnecessary documentation rebuild, which may fail. For a build failure that was caused by this flaw, see:

https://trac.macports.org/ticket/63570#comment:5