Hi Bob. On Tuesday 22 November 2011, Bob Friesenhahn wrote: > On Tue, 22 Nov 2011, Ralf Corsepius wrote: > > > >> Another question is if GNU make is really good enough to warrant this > >> sort of change. > > Good point - gmake has a long history of "hickups" :-) > > My question was not meant to imply that GNU make is riddled with bugs. > My question is if deciding to move to a tool which optimizes 30+ year > old build concepts is a good idea. > > Automake is a good build system because it provides a simple syntax by > which the developer can specify his intention. > > Any analysis of the build for large projects will show that > timestamp-based 'make' and recursion lead to huge losses in build > performance and build integrity. > > Build dependencies and knowledge of the current build state are not > adequately handled by timestamp-based 'make', even if it is GNU make. > > Software builds will only grow larger. It is time for some innovative > thinking. > I have to drop the ball on this, because I don't feel qualified nor motivated enough to follow you on this road (especially not qualified enough).
Also, if a non-negligible percentage of peoples have problems accepting even just GNU make as a requirement over plain vendor make, I'm not sure how your theoretical new-generation build tools would be greeted in practice. All of this is not to belittle your idea, that should be clear -- it's just that IMHO it sounds quite ortoghonal to the ongoing discussion. Regards, Stefano
