.aux file, or the
.idx file, respectively) has changed, and so on.
Latexmk is a fine
solution (and was used in generating printable versions of these
FAQs for a long time); it has recently been upgraded and has
many bells and whistles that allow it to operate as if it were a poor
man’s WYSIWYG system.
Apparently along the same lines, and currently (2007) under active
development, is AutoLaTeX. The README of the distribution is
actual a Unix-type man-page output, and shows great attention to the
details of the document production process.
Windows users of the MiKTeX system may use that systems
texify application. Texify deals with basic
LaTeX features, including generating a bibliography and an index;
it makes no claim to deal with other things (such as multiple
bibliographies or indexes, or lists of terminology, etc.), which
AutoLaTeX can be configured to process.
The texinfo system comes with a similar
utility called texi2dvi, which is capable of “converting”
either LaTeX or texinfo files into DVI (or into
PDF, using PDFTeX).
A later contribution is the bundle latexmake, which
offers a set of make rules that invoke texi2dvi
as necessary.
The curious may examine the rules employed to run the present
FAQ through LaTeX: we don’t present them as a complete
solution, but some of the tricks employed are surely re-usable.
This question on the Web: http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=make