Re: asynchronous make(1), anyone?

[David Young <dyoung%pobox.com@localhost>]

On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 12:20:44PM -0400, Mouse wrote:
> Now, is the make daemon supposed to notice this and kill the first
> make, or do we have to wait for the first make to finish before
> starting a second?

You do the thing that makes the programmer wait the least time.

> Furthermore, suddenly the programmer has to be careful about order of
> saves in some cases, such as when editing the build machinery (in
> simple cases this means the Makefile; in other cases it can mean
> scripts and such - saving such an edit half-done can lead to
> spectacular lossage, sometimes even including losing source files).

If the programmer has to be careful about order of saves, then it's not
a robust solution.

> > Not sure that'll work, an editor probably ought to do a 'safe write'
> > sequence involving temporary file and rename to avoid file lossage.
> 
> That's another point - the make could start partway through a
> non-atomic operation like saving a large file.  We aren't going to be
> able to compel all editors to use writes to a temp file plus renames,
> nor should we - if the source file is hardlinked elsewhere you probably
> do not want to do that anyway.

A robust solution has to deal with this.

Dave

-- 
David Young
dyoung%pobox.com@localhost    Urbana, IL    (217) 721-9981