Re: pattern rules and pattern-specific-variables problem

[Boris Kolpackov]

Shawn Halpenny <address@hidden> writes:

> > In other words, you need to write the most specialized variable definitions
> > last and the most specialized rules first.
>
> Argh; that complicates things because I not only have to care what
> order I include sub-makefiles in, but I have to care about the order
> of pattern rules and pattern-rule-variables within them.

Actually you will have to include pattern rules and pattern-specific
variables in the reverse order. Somehow I never run into this problem
in my build system. I guess it's because such rules/variables as you
showed tend to reside in the same makefile.


> I'm sure that change would break some makefiles out there, but I
> wonder how many of them would continue to work the same way because
> the people who wrote them were making the same assumption I was?

There is a way to make this backwards-compatible. We will need to
add another (command line) option to make that will select this
new algorithm. Then you will be able to turn this option on within
your makefile using the MAKEFLAGS variable.


hth,
-boris