Re: [PATCH 00/22] Towards a non-recursive build system for coreutils?

[Jim Meyering]

Stefano Lattarini wrote:
> On 08/31/2012 08:28 PM, Bob Proulx wrote:
>> Jim Meyering wrote:
>>> As expected, the build now seems faster.
>>> I haven't yet measured it.
>>
>> Not wanting to ask work of you but it would be great if when all was
>> said and done there was a posting of the build time that changed due
>> to the build infrastructure change from recursive to non-recursive
>> make.  It would be an interesting datapoint.
>>
> FWIW, I'm helping with this conversion because I believe non-recursive
> builds offer improved clarity, correctness and reliability.  The fact
> that they might also end up offering enhanced performance is just an
> extra (albeit valuable) perk, not a motivating factor.

Of course, one of us will time it once it's all done.
We'll also need a NEWS entry, and I hope Stefano will write it.

For reference, I look very favorably on converting all
packages to non-recursive make.  Bison was the first GNU
project that I noticed doing this.  I liked what I saw there
so much that I converted cppi's build system as a proof-of-concept.

It's a lot smaller and simpler, so you can see better what's required
there.  In spite of that, I'm sure it can be cleaned up even more.