Re: suddenly, "recursive make considered harmful" makes piles of sense

[Paul D. Smith]

%% Boris Kolpackov <address@hidden> writes:

>> There is also a third "philosophy": gmake within any directory will
>> build that directory and all its dependencies and any subdirectories
>> and all their dependencies.

One disadvantage to this method is that in order for it to work every
time you run make it has to read ALL the makefiles.  I work on some
projects where there are 800+ directories each with a makefile in it,
and the read-in of all the makefiles for non-recursive builds takes a
considerable amount of time and memory.

If all you want to do is make a small change and recompile locally, it's
painful to wait for that.


What we do is allow both methods by setting a flag, so that quick builds
that you know are local don't require lots of setup time.

-- 
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