One line you should add to every makefile
blog.jgc.org
One line you should add to every makefile
1–10 of 99 posts
Re: One line you should add to every makefile
#2The mere fact that such a thing is necessary disqualifies make as a build tool for me.
That being said, this trick could be handy for existing projects.
Re: One line you should add to every makefile
#3I firmly believe that there is only one production-quality makefile that has ever been written from scratch. Every other makefile has been copied from an earlier makefile, dating back to the one Ur-makefile, and modified to suit the author's purpose.
Re: One line you should add to every makefile
#4That's one huge advantage with Rake, just add `p VARIABLE_NAME` anywhere in your Rakefile, and you'll see the textual value of it at that point.
Re: One line you should add to every makefile
#5I firmly believe that there is only one production-quality makefile that has ever been written from scratch. Every other makefile has been copied from an earlier makefile, dating back to the one Ur-makefile, and modified to suit the author's purpose.
To be honest, a simple Makefile is very simple to write and efficient once you know the syntax fairly well. Then you add more and more things as the time pass, and it starts to morph into a giant huge monster that eat puppies.
Re: One line you should add to every makefile
#6That's one huge advantage with Rake, just add `p VARIABLE_NAME` anywhere in your Rakefile, and you'll see the textual value of it at that point.
You can add echo commands to Makefiles just as easily. Rake is cool for Ruby programs, but that's about it.
Re: One line you should add to every makefile
#7I firmly believe that there is only one production-quality makefile that has ever been written from scratch. Every other makefile has been copied from an earlier makefile, dating back to the one Ur-makefile, and modified to suit the author's purpose.
If I had more time, it would be interesting to run a phylogenetic analysis of makefiles. Could we find the most recent common ancestor? Can we add spatial information to track their geographic dispersal?
Re: One line you should add to every makefile
#8I firmly believe that there is only one production-quality makefile that has ever been written from scratch. Every other makefile has been copied from an earlier makefile, dating back to the one Ur-makefile, and modified to suit the author's purpose.
autoconf yes, but Makefiles, no. I'll write a new Makefile from scratch maybe once a year or so.
Re: One line you should add to every makefile
#9I'd say that most people should not write makefiles by hand. You should use some higher level build system, that knows how to deal with source files in your language, track their dependencies, etc. A "hello world" makefile with one source file looks simple, but once the project gets more complicated, you quickly end up building such a high level build system yourself, with the additional disadvantage of restricting your build system to only work on systems with GNU make, even though there might be other native build systems available for the platform.
Re: One line you should add to every makefile
#10I firmly believe that there is only one production-quality makefile that has ever been written from scratch. Every other makefile has been copied from an earlier makefile, dating back to the one Ur-makefile, and modified to suit the author's purpose.
autoconf yes, but Makefiles, no. I'll write a new Makefile from scratch maybe once a year or so.
If you use autoconf, why not use also automake?