The following was intended to go to the group, but I originally sent it only to Bastiaan.

Bastiaan Veelo wrote:

I finally reproduced an unjust "`somfile.gpi' must be recompiled" message with a minimal example.

This is the tree:

\ywin.pas \testy.pas \contrib\gpc.o \contrib\gpc.gpi

gpc.* are compiled from gps.pas as supplied with the compiler. ywin.pas and testy.pas are as follows

============== ywin.pas START ===================

MODULE ywin;

EXPORT ywin = (dummy);

IMPORT gpc only (PCStrings, CParamCount, CParameters);

procedure dummy; end;

procedure dummy; begin end; { dummy }

end.

============= ywin.pas END =====================

============= testy.pas START ====================

program testy;

import ywin;

begin end.

============= testy.pas END ======================

============ Compile log START ================

...

gpc -c -g --unit-path=contrib ywin.pas

...

gpc testy.pas

testy4.pas:3: `ywin.gpi' must be recompiled

The message is "justified" by the method used to check if files are up to date: namely, in the process gpc has to check that all gpi file used by the interface of ywin.pas are up to date. However, gpc only uses filenames to find out the files, so it can not find gpc.gpi and thinks that ywin.pas must be recompiled.

Simple workaround is to give `--unit-path=contrib:.' option to both compilations.

gpc could probably give better error message (or remember full patchname to source/gpi files), but OTOH changing unit path value during build is likely to produce other errors.