Re: Q: what is the best practice to express dependency-only-prerequisites?

[Paul D. Smith]

%% "Markus F.X.J. Oberhumer" <address@hidden> writes:

  mfxjo> Do you think that this is an important (and sementically clean)
  mfxjo> feature and would accept a patch for inclusion ?

  >> Before I can comment, I'd need to see a very precise definition of
  >> exactly what behavior you are looking for in a
  >> "dependency-only-prerequisite".

  mfxjo> I will try to implement a first version for review and
  mfxjo> comments.

I *STRONGLY* encourage you to discuss the solution here before you
implement anything.  There is quite a bit of process and skeptical
analysis to go through before any code can be considered for
acceptance.  I would hate to have anyone do a whole bunch of work then
get upset if it wasn't integrated.

The best way to proceed is to describe exactly what functionality you
want to implement, then we can critique it and make sure that there is
no existing way to do it, that all corner cases are covered, that it
doesn't change the behavior of make in any way that is prohibited by the
POSIX standard, etc.


Also, recall that before any significant amount of code can be
integrated into GNU make you'll need to sign legal papers assigning your
copyright interest over to the FSF (and your company will need to do the
same, if they have copyright on your work).

Cheers!

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