[Automake-ng] Early Automake-NG design (was: Re: Activating support for silent-rules unconditionally?)

[Stefano Lattarini]

On 04/16/2012 08:41 PM, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> On Mon, 16 Apr 2012, Stefano Lattarini wrote:
>>>
>> Ah, but note that there is no guarantee that an input written for Automake
>> will continue to work correctly for Automake-NG...  although we want to
>> minimize the incompatibilites and avoid gratuitous breakage, so I agree
>> with you that is a good idea to keep 'silent-rules' as a no-op but valid
>> option for the time being.
> 
> The acceptance of Automake-ng will be much higher if it accepts all valid
> Automake.am files (as per existing documentation).  With a properly-written
> Automake.am it should be possible to switch back and forth by simply using
> a different automake tool.  Hopefully that is the plan.
>
For this first-generation Automake-NG, basically yes (although we will
*not* ensure a 100% compatibility).  After that (so, after this year's
GSoC), it would be nice to start planning for an "Automake-NG 2.0" that
is more similar in spirit to the Quagmire philosophy.  Until then,
Automake-time pre-processing and GNU make runtime processing should
co-exist to ensure higher compatibility with mainstream Automake (holding
to the principle that the former should try to delegate as much work as
possible to the latter, to allow users to take advantage of as much GNU
make features as possible in their Makefile.ams).

> Explicit Makefile bits which are added via hooks or additional dependencies
> may need to adapt.
> 
> There is of course no guarantee or warranty. :-)
>
;-)

Regards,
  Stefano