Re: hidden dependencies

[Krzysztof Cieniuch]

Philip Guenther wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 5:26 AM, Warlich, Christof
> <address@hidden> wrote:
> ...
>   
> > > I'm very interested in this subject.  In my project we have generated
> > > code for rpc interfaces and corba plus there is perl tool that generates
> > > some xml files.
> > >       
> > Same with me, lots of generated (include) files, so gcc -MD can't track
> > the dependencies until the files are generted.
> >     
>
> What I did on a previous project that faced this was create an
> order-only dependency from each file that 'could' #include a generated
> .h file to that generated file.  That guarantees the files are created
> soon enough without requiring that everything be recompiled if a
> generated header file is updated.
>
>
> Philip Guenther
>
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>   
I think my previous reasoning was incorrect. Order dependencies will 
work in any case
if some target depends on order dependency that dependency will be 
rebuild first  if outdated it just won't
trigger rebuild of depending targets. So it is perfect fit for generated 
resources (i.e. everything in project must order depend on generated 
sources)
with just this side effect that they will be always regenerated, and it 
is "serialization" point in parallel build but that is better then 
broken build.
So I might to look at this once more. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

The only maintenance issue is keeping up to date list of modules that 
generate files.
My build system includes only necessary makefiles when building project 
module (subdirectory)
Parsing each time 500 makefiles is not an option since it takes to long 
(on Sun T5440 it takes around 2.5 minute) and if developer is working
on single module edit/recompile cycle would take to long.

NB The problem (or beauty) of build systems is that there is no good 
solution that would fit all.
So what is left is summary of good practices and general guidelines. Is 
there good book/website
about building build systems with GNU make ?

Thanks
Krzysztof