On Tue, 2019-06-11 at 22:09 -0400, David A. Wheeler wrote: > Basically, when running a rule, make could enable strace to see > what is *actually* getting checked/read & written, compare that to > what the rule *claims* are the prerequisites & targets, and then > complain about differences.
At this time my opinion is that this is a "bridge too far" and I'm not inclined to accept any changes like this. I feel that it's too far outside of (what I consider) make's purview, too system-specific, tricky to get right (consider recursion... are you going to be watching all the submakes and all the things THEY watch?) etc. As DavidB pointed out, there are already project that attempt to provide some of these features and I'm perfectly fine with asking people who want them, to go find them. And if you consult with him you'll no doubt learn that "just use strace" is far too simplistic for what is actually needed to make this work well. I get that having a make that "does everying right out of the box" is seductive, but I'm not on board at this point. I would be willing to work with people who wanted to implement such things as loadable modules in GNU make, to ensure that the loadable module API is enhanced in such a way that writing a module like this is feasible. Currently it would be difficult since it's not easy to modify the rules database through that API (you basically have to call the eval function... which makes it possible but not ideal) and there are no hooks into the module when running recipes themselves. So, conversations about the existence or validity of patents in this area are moot as far as I'm concerned :). _______________________________________________ Bug-make mailing list Bug-make@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-make