Re: Feature request: silently overriding existing rules

[Stefano Lattarini]

On 08/11/2012 01:27 AM, David Boyce wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Stefano Lattarini
> <address@hidden> wrote:
>> I have no answer for that, lacking any knowledge about GNU make
>> internals; I guess the make developers here will be in a better
>> position to answer my question.
> 
> Yes, and I hope you get your feature. But consider that auto-tools are
> traditionally targeted at the lowest common denominator. You've made
> an explicit exception for Automake-NG that it will require GNU make,
> which is reasonable. But do you really want to require a
> not-yet-even-released version? 
>
No.  But the nice thing is that we can support 3.81 and later if we
accept "graceful degradation": that is, make versions <= 3.82 will
print an "override" warnings unconditionally (annoying, but bearable),
while versions >= 3.83 will respect explicit user overrides, without
any spurious/redundant diagnostic.  And the more the time passes,
the more the situation will improve (since more and more people will
be using 3.83 or later in the future).

> That might not become generally
> available for a decade or so, depending how portable you want to be.
> It seems to me that targeting 3.81 or so would be better. IMHO.
>
That is currently our own target, yes (but I'm ready to just assume
make 3.82 or later if the first stable Automake-NG version will be
more than eight months from now).  The argument about "graceful
degradation" given above shows that is not a problem in practice.

Thanks,
  Stefano