Re: Enhancement of conditionals?

[Boris Kolpackov]

Hi Noel,
 
> > > That might be true, but Lisp is really a very good language for a make
> > > scripting language, since much of make's behavior, at least in terms of
> > > expansion of variables, etc. is somewhat Lisp-like already.
> > 
> > Just a thought: rather than adding a lisp-like language to make wouldn't
> > it be easier to implement make-like inference system in lisp?
> > 
> > Comments?
> 
> The meat of make is rule-based so I would think that replacing this with 
> a functional programming language would not be a good thing.

I noticed that as a make-based build systems gets more elaborate 
the more and more code in makefiles is procedural rather than 
declarative (rules). Though I believe rules are the most important
property of make.

When I contemplated make-like inference system in lisp I didn't say 
I suggest to throw away rules. We should still have them:

hello : hello.c
        gcc -o $@ $<


(defrule ("hello") ("hello.c")
  "gcc -o $@ $<")


Not as succinct but way more powerful.

Comments?

-boris

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