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Re: [PATCH] Improve “missing separator” error when reading spaces
From: |
Paul Smith |
Subject: |
Re: [PATCH] Improve “missing separator” error when reading spaces |
Date: |
Thu, 24 Nov 2016 15:03:07 -0500 |
On Sat, 2016-11-19 at 18:49 +0100, Michael Stapelberg wrote:
> With this change, users who have their editor misconfigured when writing
> Makefiles without using 8 spaces for one TAB character will also get a
> friendly error message.
I'm not a fan of this change.
Make's "missing separator" is really a generic "syntax error" message.
It just means that make couldn't parse the line. There are lots of
reasons that a line couldn't be parsed, that have nothing to do with a
missing TAB. There are also lots of makefiles that indent lines (with
spaces) which are not intended to be recipe lines.
I don't like the idea of telling the user that every line make can't
recognize, that begins with a space, should be changed into a recipe
line by adding a TAB.