Re: Getting list of source files from directory hierarchy

[John Calcote]

Hi Paul,

On 9/28/2009 3:22 PM, Paul Smith wrote:
> On Mon, 2009-09-28 at 13:50 -0700, Michael Morrell wrote:
>    
> > I was wide open to ideas on ways people deal with not wanting to
> > hardcode a list of source filenames in the Makefiles.  I thought this
> > was common enough that perhaps there was a builtin make function to
> > help out (I did look through the manual and didn't see anything, but I
> > could have easily missed it).
> >      
> Actually, this behavior is discouraged (at least by me).  In reality
> there's NO completely reliable way to automatically determine what
> source files you want to build: there could always be backup files or
> test files or other temporary files that happen to match whatever
> pattern you come up with.
>
> In my book, a build system that is not completely reliable is very, very
> bad.
>
> Whenever I'm asked about this I _always_ say, just list the files you
> want to build explicitly in your makefile, or somewhere.  It's not
> onerous to keep this list up to date (how often are brand new files
> added, anyway?) and it saves a lot of headache and hassle.
>    

I've had at least one case in my past where it was more than a little 
painful to list all source files manually. One such case involved a 
large build system wherein dozens of C source files where generated by 
an external code generator (that happened to be written in Java, no 
less). These file names were all long and ugly because they were a munge 
of operation codes applied during generation. A given generation could 
change the name of the files in subtle ways.

Now, I know what you're going to say: If they're generated, then they're 
not sources. I agree, but the file generation process was actually done 
on a secure machine with a different build system. Not the best idea, I 
know, but it was there before I got there, and I had to work with it.

Other than for situations like this, I whole-heartedly agree with your 
sentiments. :)

John