Re: .ONESHELL enhancement?

[Matt McCutchen]

On Sun, 2009-10-04 at 08:59 +0200, Boris Kolpackov wrote:
> David Boyce <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > Again, if it doesn't work for someone, they don't need to use it.
> 
> I don't like the idea that .ONESHELL will realistically only work 
> for specially-crafted makefiles (and that's where, I feel, it is
> going). This way it becomes a feature for a "special interest" group.

I don't think that's a fair statement.  .ONESHELL becomes a feature
available to anyone willing to invest the effort to use it properly,
just like any new feature in any software.

> I would much prefer it being smart enough to be able to work with a 
> wide range of existing build systems.

If you have an idea of how to achieve this, I'd like to hear it.

> Or, at least, issue warnings
> for incompatible constructs so that a build system can be fixed.

It would be impossible to do that with 100% accuracy.  Conversion of a
complex build system to .ONESHELL mode is not, in general, easy; given
that a developer is willing to put in the effort, I think it would be
enough to mention the most common types of incompatible constructs in
the .ONESHELL documentation.

-- 
Matt