On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 5:48 AM, Mark Galeck (CW)
<address@hidden> wrote:
>I think your conclusions are a little strong here.
Well yes, I am a perfectionist :) if a tool has a bug, even the smallest one, that cannot be fixed withing the realm of that tool, then I say it is a flawed tool.
i think the key factor here is "garbage in, garbage out." All automation has its limits, and all automation is based on some form of input. If the input (the deps) are not 100% pedantically correct, they're not going to behave 100% correctly. i agree with Paul that deps sometimes do get out of sync, despite our best efforts (happens to me often when i remove or rename a file), and simply need to be regenerated. i wouldn't call that a bug, but a minor limitation. It's also very language-dependent. Java, for example, with its strict directory structures, has fewer problems here than free-for-all languages like C, C++, etc. Remember that make doesn't technically know what a C compiler is (though it does have default rules for %.c, the make engine doesn't know that), and by extension cannot know the intricacies of C dependencies. It is up to the makefile implementor to ensure that Make is fed the same deps info as the compiler will be fed.