The suggestion:
A flag to clearmake to instruct it to take directory versions in considerations during configuration lookup.
Clearmake usually skips directory versions during configuration lookup, i.e. consider DOs matching on element versions only suitable for winkin. This is in general a reasonable choice: not doing so would often defeat the purpose of build avoidance for no benefit.
Sometimes however, new versions of directories differ in ways which invalidate the builds, if these are actually run. In addition, the directory versions are recorded, and used e.g. for labeling when using "ct mklabel -con".
In our case, a newer version of some directory had crept into builds, hiding tools needed by an other sub-project. When the two components were built together (integration), the label was placed onto the newest version of the directory, and the build failed.