David,
I overlooked one other issue that a Gentoo developer pointed out to me. The make install phase recompiles xfractint as follows
make -j5 DESTDIR=/var/tmp/portage/x11-misc/xfractint- 20.04_p15/image/usr install cd ./dos_help; ../hc /c; mv fractint.hlp .. HC - FRACTINT Help Compiler.
Compiling: help.src Making hot-links. Paginating online help. Paginating document. Writing: helpdefs.h Note: FRACTINT must be re-compiled.
Do you know what is causing this rebuild?
I do now. This line in the Make file: install: xfractint fractint.hlp lists xfractint and fractint.hlp as prerequisites, so Make builds them first. I don't think there is any other way to ensure the executable is up to date before installing. You could check for the existance of the executable, but that is no guarantee of being up to date. Jonathan