Re: adding functions to function.c

[John Graham-Cumming]

On Wed, 2005-01-12 at 11:23, Dill, John wrote:
> That is cool.  I was able to get a couple of functions working, but
> what about global variables.  Is expand only 1 or 0?  If I wanted to
> define semantics for $(true) and $(false) to expand to "true" and ""
> for example, is that a easy task as well?  Also, what is the rule of
> thumb if encoding functions which expect a certain format, like
> numbers for instance.

I think the best thing for you to do is to sit down and read a bunch of
the GNU Make source code.  Here's a rough outline to get you going:

default.c       The default variables and rules
expand.c        Expression and variable expansion
function.c      The built-in functions like $(strip)
read.c          Makefile parsing
variable.c      Variable handling

> Do you maintain your own special version of make with your own
> additions?

No and I wouldn't encourage someone to go down this path unless they
really have to.  Most times I've been able to do everything I want
within GNU Make's own language and the times I haven't I've used a quick
$(shell) with utility programs like sed, awk, etc.   

> I'm not really sure which way to go.  I don't know which things are in
> the spirit of make, and whether or not some other development effort
> is being done to address some of these types of things.  

Well, I'm not officially involved in GNU Make at all.  I happen to use
it a lot and wrote an emulator for GNU Make in my "day job", so I can't
answer those questions.   I guess that if you have specific functions
you think need adding you could propose them here, or write a patch. 
Whatever you do talk to Paul Smith, he maintains GNU Make and knows
what's going on.

John.
-- 
John Graham-Cumming

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