suggestion: new make function

[Lawrence Ibarria]

I have often hit problems with the limit of command line lengths many shells have (CMD.EXE in Windows in my case).

This is a common case with few solutions, I have searched around:

 

http://www.makelinux.net/make3/make3-CHP-5-SECT-6

 

I would like to propose a couple new functions in make that can help work around this problem.

 

$(dumpOneLine filename, $(list))

$(dumpOnePerLine filename, $(list))

 

The idea here is to ask make to dump into a file (either on a single line or each element of the list in a new line) all the contents of a list.

This function specifically does not use the shell, I expect make to implement it with fopen directly. Once all the contents of a long list in make are in a file, programs (such as linker, or compiler) can use that file as input.

 

I do not know how to address specifics such as variable expansion on the list (I’d suggest no variable expansion at all, create a new list for that).

 

What do you think?

 

  -- Lawrence