Re: Request for critique on a small makefile

[Edward Z. Yang]

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Philip Guenther wrote:
> No, more personal habit than rational decision: I used $< in makefile
>  long before I ever used a make that supported $^.  I agree that $^ 
> makes more sense for rules that may have more than one input, such as
>  those for linking executables.

Thanks for the clarification.

> So you didn't add the .exe suffix to the names in the 'programs' 
> variable?  Hmm.  What happens if you run 'make' twice, without 
> modifying any files?  If your makefile is correctly set up, then the 
> second 'make' will do nothing, because the targets are all up to
> date. If the .exe confusion means that your makefile is violating
> Paul's rule #2 then one or both executable will be rebuilt by the
> second make.

Here's the kicker: through some Cygwin magic, a stat call on 'foobar'
will pick up a file named 'foobar.exe'. Thus, running make twice
demonstrates proper behavior: nothing is recompiled.

Maybe I'm violating the rule, maybe I'm not. According to the only
makefile, Paul's 2nd rule is not violated. In practice on Windows
systems, it is being violated, but in a manner that usually prevents
make from getting confused: make clean being the exception. I suppose if
you tried to use a non-GNU make problems would arise though...

Greg Chicares wrote:
> Here's how automake handles it: [snip]

Yeah, I'm sure that would fix the problem, but do I want to do that? I
want to be lazy, therefore, I don't want to have to be sticking
${EXEEXT} variable substitutions willy nilly.

I need to figure out how to use automake/autoconf sometime. However, for
now, learn how to walk before you run. :-)

> %$(EXEEXT):

What is the % for?

Finally, another pedantic issue: do you use braces or parentheses for
variable substitution? Why? (it seems to me that braces are used for
make-defined variables while parentheseses are used for user-defined
variables)

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