Re: VPATH and Makefiles

[David Boyce]

At 11:20 AM 6/23/2004, Boris Kolpackov wrote:
> David Boyce <address@hidden> writes:
>
> > I've often wished for the equivalent of the Ant "-find" feature to be
> > implemented in make. This would simply ask make to work its way up toward
> > the root looking for a makefile in each intervening directory and stopping
> > when one is found. Basically a recursive version of the current
> > makefile-finding algorithm. It would allow you to run make in any 
> subdir of
> > a large project tree with only a single Makefile at its base (or e.g. a
> > Makefile for each of the 'cmd', 'lib', and 'doc' subtrees), thus removing
> > one of the ergonomic problems with single-makefile (non-recursive) build
> > models.
>
> This won't scale for builds in split directories (i.e. sources in one
> tree, generated code in the other).

True but I didn't suggest it as the default behavior, merely as an option. 
I suspect that for every GNU make option you could draw up a scenario where 
it's not helpful; that's why they're options.

But with that said, this list and this thread are not the appropriate venue 
for my suggestion so I'd like to let it drop.

-David Boyce