Enhancement: GNU Make should provide an option not following the symbolic links

[Chihping Fu]

By default, GNU Make follows the symbolic links until it reaches the normal
files and retrieves the
timestamps. However, in our environment, we use GNU Make and would
like it not to follow the
symbolic links and use the timestamps on the them. We had to modify
the source file to compile
our own version of GNU Make. This is a very simple changes - use lstat(2)
instead of stat(2). This
forces us to maintain a different branch of GNU Make. So we think it
would better for GNU Make
to provide options similar to -follow in find(1). We are wondering
if there are any similar projects
working on this enhancement. Otherwise, we can work on this and provide
the patch. Please advise.

Thanks,

Chihping