This is a regression introduced in 9211a5d7d0b4, when uses of ST_MTIME
constants were changed to uses of st_mtime attributes.  As diagnosed in
the bug report, this change is not merely stylistic: st_mtime is a
float but ST_MTIME’s resolution is rounded to the seconds, so there was
a mismatch between the values seen by file_util and dep_util which
caused an sdist to be unnecessarily created a second time on an ext4
filesystem.

This patch has been tested by John S. Gruber, who reported the bug.
As this is a simple code revert, I think it’s okay to commit without a
unit test.