Re: multiple targets for a single command

[Alessandro Vesely]

Boris Kolpackov wrote:
> Alessandro Vesely <address@hidden> writes:
>
> > I'd be curious to know if the changes done for 3.81, e.g. second
> > expansion, made it easier or more difficult to possibly implement
> > that feature.
>
> I don't see how the second expansion would be useful in solving this.

I thought that change altered inner processing somewhat. Thus it might
ease some further implementations whilst some other became more difficult.

> I don't have any plans (or needs, for that matter) in this area.

Paul once said he'd always wanted to implement such a feature
and every now and then someone else asks about it.


> I don't think that when people at Sun decided to use '$' in file
> names they didn't consider the consequences. It was known that
> POSIX make has no provision for handling '$' in file names.

With 20/20 hindsight, one can argue they'd better use '.'.
The workaround is to export MAKE_VERSION for any dependency
generator that needs it.


> Perhaps they decided that you shouldn't use make to build Java
> classes?

Hmmm... google for "We use gnumake to build our software"

A common practice provides for appending all java sources to a list and
then compile everything with a `javac $(shell cat list)' sort of construct.
That works, but it's not the most efficient way to do it. In particular,
recompiling a class triggers the creation of new C headers with javah which
in turn recompiles any native C source, etcetera. The result is a build
system whose users often prefer to mentally reckon dependencies and
manually build sub-targets accordingly.