On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 11:52:07PM +0530, Weldon Goree wrote: > On 06/25/2014 05:35 PM, Sylvain BERTRAND wrote: > > > > Using a makefile is overkill. Should be a sh script. > > > > Makefiles should be used only when there are too many source > > files to recompile for a build increment. > > Huh. Make strikes me as one of the more suckless tools out there. It > does exactly what it says it does, and nothing else. It doesn't "reach > inside" the tools you tell it to use (except for the fact that it more > or less intrinsically knows the workflow 99% of C compilation projects > use, but you can also make it forget that easily). It doesn't complain > if you use it for something outside of its intended scope -- I'm a > sysadmin, not a "real" programmer, and I've used make in just about > every aspect of sysadmining, one way or another. It even works as a > fairly usable rc / daemon control system (it could be init itself, for > that matter). But it does none of those things by bloating; it does them > by staying out of the way as much as possible. > > It does one thing well (running commands based on a supplied command > definition and dependency file), liberally reads a plaintext > human-readable file as input, places no artificial limitations on its > usability, and acts deterministically and predictably*. That's what > sucking less is, really. > > Now, a downside of being a good tool is that it gets misused a lot. You > could say the same thing of a good power drill. Make is the medium into > which GNU's autohell gets translated, but that's mostly because it's one > of the few systems both simple and powerful enough to survive that > monstrosity and still mostly function. > > But, back to your point, I don't know that a custom shellscript is "more > lightweight" in any important sense than a makefile. Make is on > basically any system with a compiler -- if you're using simple, portable > makefiles (and you should), then it's actually a more stable API to work > with than trying to work around all the various shells and their > versions that might be out there. Using a shellscript opens you up to > "oh, that doesn't work in bash < 4.1" and "wait, what if somebody has > /bin/sh linked to csh?" (to say nothing of "where do the semicolons go > in a bash for loop, again?"). To me, make should be used when you need a > specific set of commands run in a dependency relationship, particularly > one involving file mtimes. Many, many builds work that way, even simple > ones. > > If you'd prefer, look at make as a rather clever sed/awk script that > transforms a yaml file into a series of sh commands. > > * Having behavior tied to mtimes of files in the environment makes it > somewhat less than deterministic, in fairness. > > Weldon
Could you repost on the thread I was rightfully requested to create for this topic. Thank you. -- Sylvain
