Re: [bug-gettext] gettext-0.20 has parallel make install issues

[Bruno Haible]

Hi Miguel,

> What do you think?

I admire your perseverance.

But I'm not satisfied with the result:

  1) Recursive "make" invocations should be limited to a minimum.
     In my experience (with po/Makefile.in.in),
       - In those places where recursive "make" is being used, especially
         with 'touch' and such, a lot of testing is needed each time you
         do a modification.
       - Older or non-GNU 'make' have a problem with "make -n" (or other
         'make' options) and recursive invocations. Such make options
         need to be passed through the MAKEFLAGS, and there are problems
         with that in some cases.
  2) It is not reliable to use 'touch' in Makefiles, due to situations
     with NFS and time skews. To create time stamp files, better use
     ': > foo' instead of 'touch foo', because ': > foo' uses the clock
     the NFS server, whereas 'touch foo' uses the clock of the client machine.
  3) A simple rule has been transformed to 3 rules, including one PHONY,
     and breaking symmetry between the targets. That is lots of added
     complexity, just for the sake of parallel make.

I'll prefer that plan:

> >   1. wait for the next GNU make release,
> >   2. find a way to use this new syntax with GNU make, while at the
> > same time not killing the ability to use the Makefile with non-GNU
> > makes.

because
  - it hopefully will have a smaller overall complexity,
  - there may be other uses of GNU make features that are interesting
    to use in Makefile.am (when we have a fallback for non-GNU make).

Bruno