1 files changed, 8 insertions, 10 deletions

diff --git a/lisp/Makefile.in b/lisp/Makefile.in
index 01dbc563bc0..593dcc7fc3f 100644
--- a/lisp/Makefile.in
+++ b/lisp/Makefile.in
@@ -215,21 +215,19 @@ $(lisp)/progmodes/cc-mode.elc: \
 
 # Prepare a bootstrap in the lisp subdirectory.
 #
-# Build loaddefs.el, because it's not sure it's up-to-date, and if it's not,
-# that might lead to errors during the bootstrap because something fails to
-# autoload as expected.  However, if there is no emacs binary, then we can't
-# build autoloads yet, so just make sure there's some loaddefs.el file, as
-# it's necessary for generating the binary (because loaddefs.el is an
-# automatically generated file, we don't want to store it in the source
-# repository).
+# Build loaddefs.el to make sure it's up-to-date.  If it's not, that
+# might lead to errors during the bootstrap because something fails to
+# autoload as expected.  If there is no emacs binary, then we can't
+# build autoloads yet.  In that case we have to use ldefs-boot.el;
+# bootstrap should always work with ldefs-boot.el.  (Because
+# loaddefs.el is an automatically generated file, we don't want to
+# store it in the source repository).
 
 bootstrap-prepare:
         if test -x $(EMACS); then                               \
           $(MAKE) $(MFLAGS) autoloads;                          \
         else                                                    \
-          if test ! -r $(lisp)/loaddefs.el; then                \
-            cp $(lisp)/ldefs-boot.el $(lisp)/loaddefs.el;       \
-          fi                                                    \
+          cp $(lisp)/ldefs-boot.el $(lisp)/loaddefs.el;         \
         fi
 
 maintainer-clean: distclean