Re: [Automake-NG] [FYI] [ng] automake: remove support for threaded execution

[Akim Demaille]

Le 30 juil. 2012 à 21:27, Stefano Lattarini a écrit :

> Why are we removing such a nice feature, especially in a world where
> multicore systems are becoming the norm?

Sorry I took so long to answer.

IMHO there are two major features provided by multiple makefiles.  One is that 
you can "scope" variables, so you can set AM_CPPFLAGS = -Werror here, and not 
there.  Alternatives with a single Makefile are all much more painful.  The 
other is "scopes" for targets: make check -C DIR is very handy to check a given 
set of features.  This is much easier than make check-FEATURE, as you just have 
to run "ls" to know what you are looking for.  Maybe "make help" or some magic 
means to get a list of useful targets would be nice (make list-check for 
instance could list all the check* targets too).  Of course local convenience 
Makefiles that just bounce to the main one, would make this issue softer.

So I can understand why people would keep several Makefiles.  And we are 
talking about people whose Automake-run-time is *four minutes*!!!  A single 
large Makefile.am also means there is less "separated compilation": a change in 
a single place might trigger a much larger rebuild.

So I'm feeling uncomfortable with this change, yet I understand your 
motivations.

Tough decision.

If you're sure you can improve the maintainer life for such packages, then fine.