> It gets rather anoying when a build fails because the old
> .depend file references a now deleted file.

Yep.

> The patch forces the .depend file to be regenerated if any of the
> referenced files has been deleted.

Please remember that the .depend file is regenerated from the
individual .d files these days, and the offending .d file does also
need to be regenerated.

Regards,

- Håvard