Re: make: dependfile preference list

[David Holland <dholland-tech%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 03:46:21PM -0700, Simon J. Gerraty wrote:
 > > > Being able to set .MAKE.DEPENDFILE (default .depend) is a big part of
 > > > that.
 > >
 > >I don't see how.
 > 
 > As you know make traditionally reads (in order)
 > 
 > sys.mk                       found via MAKESYSPATH
 > [mM]akefile          typically in .CURDIR
 > .depend                      typically in .OBJDIR
 > 
 > .depend isn't a good name for something that would be checked into 
 > the SCM - Makefile.depend or Makefile.depend.* are reasonable choices
 > for that.

When I used to do that as standard practice (check in the depend
files) I called it "depend.mk".

However, I never imagined that I ought to add special-case
functionality to make to allow it to know about this name and process
it specially.

 > Requiring that each [mM]akefile explicitly .-include something 
 > a/ is clunky compared to the above

No, what's clunky is hacking parts of your custom build environment
into make.

 > b/ as joerg pointed out loses the special handling of stale dependencies

and as Joerg also already pointed out, this is a bug, and the proper
approach is to fix it, not add increasingly convoluted workarounds.

-- 
David A. Holland
dholland%netbsd.org@localhost