Re: maint.mk syntax check problems

[Simon Josefsson]

Martin von Gagern <address@hidden> writes:

> And I'm still interested in some feedback what you think about turning
> those syntax checks into a shell script file instead of embedding so
> much ugly backslash-continued shell code into the makefile.

I'm not a fan of separate shell scripts, each new file to deal with
seems to incur a small maintainance cost over time -- consider when they
are renamed or moved.  I think gnulib already install a large number of
of files into projects using gnulib, so we should be conservative about
increasing that number needlessly.

If the downside with the alternative is a slightly more complex
makefile, I think that is preferrably -- remember that false negatives
(i.e., if the script fails to identify a problem) are not fatal, 'make
syntax-check' is a regression tool to catch the most blatant issues, but
undoubtedly a lot of things goes undetected.  If someone notices an
instance of something the script should have caught but didn't, that can
always be fixed.

In general I'm in favor of as simple code as possible, but I think here
the cost with many new shell scripts outweigh the benefit of improved
code.

/Simon