Re: unesthetic build commands generated by automake

[Alexandre Duret-Lutz]

>>> "Ralf" == Ralf Corsepius <address@hidden> writes:

 Ralf> Am Mon, 2003-02-24 um 18.18 schrieb Alexandre Duret-Lutz:
 >> FWIW, Automake doesn't support %-rule.  This is not portable,
 >> not POSIX, nothing.  You can run `automake -Wportability' to get
 >> warning about these (BTW, these warnings are likely to be turned
 >> on by default in 1.8 -- people who know what they do can start
 >> using `AUTOMAKE_OPTIONS = -Wno-portability' now).

 Ralf> I don't think this step would be a wise decision unless automake can
 Ralf> provide a replacement.

Sorry I don't follow.  A replacement for what?  %-rules?
Automake never understood these, why should we provide a
replacement?

I agree we should still support those people that know what
their business and use %-rules anyway, just like we did before
(i.e., no real support but no complaints).  So if you use
-Wno-portability, you get the old behavior.  I don't see what's
unwise.  Automake is there to help creating portable Makefiles.

 Ralf> Why doesn't automake parse them and rewrite them into a portable form?

I've tought about this too, but came to the conclusion it was
impossible.  Consider the following horror:

%.o: subdir1/%.c subdir2/%.h
        ...

The subdirectories and the number of dependencies prevent
any conversion to a portable suffix rule.

We can't expand this to normal (i.e. non-suffix) rules either if
we assume built sources.

-- 
Alexandre Duret-Lutz