Dmitry Goncharov wrote: > > 1) The title, and what does the user want? > This patch is not a full-fledged troubleshooting guide. ... > > Is that really what I want to do and should do, as a user? > i believe, makefile authors should apply these techniques.
OK, then it's appropriate to create *three* new sections: * In the chapter "Troubleshooting": - "Which rules would be executed, and why?" * In an appendix or chapter "Optimizing Makefiles" - "Disabling implicit rules entirely" => MAKEFLAGS - "Disabling implicit rules for a particular target" => makefile::; The sections can have some overlap, e.g. all of these three will use "make -n -d", but with different focus. > How about "How to relieve make from redundant work and reduce the > amount of debug output."? I believe these two user goals are so different; they belong in different chapters. > My opinion is that, large amounts of debug output is not the problem. I disagree: I believe that 80%-90% of the developers, when they see 1000 lines of debug/trace output, give up understanding it after 5 seconds and try alternative approaches. (This is based on observing the habits of my developer colleagues at work.) > > Can the addition of 'makefile::;' be replaced by a make option or > > by some (sed-based?) postprocessing? > > There is no option. > You can grep away most of the matching lines with 'grep -v makefile'. Then it's useful to present this as a filter in the troubleshooting section. Bruno