Re: Suggestion of implementing a feature for the next Google Summer of Code.

[Paul Smith]

On Tue, 2007-03-20 at 12:49 +0100, Ramón García wrote:
> I am interested in implementing feature request of GNU make (which I
> wrote) http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?18617 about enhancing debugging
> capabilities, in order to make it easier to understand how makefiles
> written by others work. This is a problem that I often encouter.
> 
> The GNU project has been awarded some summer of code grants. Would you
> be interested in a proposal for implementing these features?

I personally don't have the time and energy to mentor anyone in the SOC.
I'm not sure what the procedure would be for a situation like this.

Also, I'm somewhat skeptical that the amount of work involved here rises
to the level of a SOC project; I doubt that there's more than 3-4 days
of full-time work involved with these projects.  All the information you
need is already tracked by GNU make: filenames and line numbers are
stored with every variable and target.  It's really just a matter of
printing them out in the right places.  The only remotely difficult part
is coming up with an output format everyone (er... meaning me! :)) can
agree on ;-) :-)

Some of the other bits, such as printing a "postprocessed" makefile,
might be slightly more work, but there are already patches out there
that do at least part of it.

Showing variable expansion is also easy--except that the output would be
enormous.  Perhaps coming up with a way to selectively show variable
expansion results might be a bit trickier, but if you want something
like that remake is probably a better bet for you.


Implementation of something like remake would be a great SOC project
but... it's already done (thanks Rocky! :))

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Paul D. Smith <address@hidden>          Find some GNU make tips at:
 http://www.gnu.org                      http://make.paulandlesley.org
 "Please remain calm...I may be mad, but I am a professional." --Mad Scientist