Re: mumble+= foo

[Tom Tromey]

>>>>> "Akim" == Akim Demaille <address@hidden> writes:

> | The uninitialized values are another instance of the `unknown' source
> | extensions bug reported earlier.

Akim> Thanks, I'm applying it.

I didn't see the commit so I'm committing now.

Alexandre> But that's not what I want: basically I'd like to inherit
Alexandre> @LDFLAGS@ from Autoconf and append -nostartfiles to it.

Akim> Yep, but a pain in the neck to implement.  Yet semantics when
Akim> conditionals are used is to be defined.

I agree with both of you :-).  On the one hand Alexandre's suggestion
for `+=' semantics makes sense.  On the other hand it is sort of ugly
to use.

BTW adding to LDFLAGS is bad anyway because the user is free to
override that variable at make time.


Akim, what is the semantic problem with conditionals?

    if FOO
    SOMETHING += value
    endif

It seems to me that this has an obvious meaning.  The implementation
might be ugly (both in automake and in Makefile.in), but so are many
things in the implementation.


If you want to see something really ugly, there is a PR about this:

    if FOO
    include_HEADERS = foo.h
    endif

In this case, if FOO is false, then `make installdirs' will still make
$(includedir), which is clearly wrong -- as will `make install'.
Ouch.

Tom