R devel - Apr 2007 - use of .Rout.save files in the 'tests' directory of a package

Even though all files in the 'tests' directory are copied to the 
installation directory and tests are run there, the current makefiles 
that runs the tests (share/make/{tests,wintests}.mk seem to go to some 
trouble to refer to the .Rout.save files in the original 'tests' 
directory. (E.g., in the line "@if test -f $(srcdir)/$@.save; then" in
share/make/tests.mk.)  This means that .Rout.save files created during 
the testing process (either by .Rin files or via 'make') are not seen. 
I'm using R-2.5.0 (beta) under Windows and Linux, and AFAICT, this is 
the same under both systems.

Is there some good reason that .Rout.save files from the source 'tests' 
directory are used rather than the ones in the fresh copy of the 'tests'
directory?  If this is some sort of historical legacy, could this be 
changed so that the testing always uses the copies of the files in fresh 
copy of the 'tests' directory?  (In cases where they are present in the 
source directory, they should be identical, AFAICS.)

-- Tony Plate