Re: [RFC] time for makecc?

[Graham Nash]

Samium Gromoff wrote:

> I think that this makecc thing would have many positive sides besides 
> "just doing
>
> the thing i need"---for example the most obvious benefit is that the whole
> mechanism suddenly becomes much more translucent and people who debug their 
> makefiles
> will surely benefit from that. Second major point is that the resulting makefile
> is much more portable than then original---and this could be a major benefit in 
> some
> corner cases.
>
>  

I tend to agree with you that something that produces an equivalent, but 
simplified, makefile to the one being processed would be very helpful.  
It would be a little like the -E option on gcc. It would take the input 
makefiles and rewrite it so with "everything" expanded into basic 
elements. I have spent many an hour wondering what did make actually do 
to some arcane construct I had fed in.

Rather than create a different program, an option (-E?) within make 
would surely be more convenient.

It should be realised though that the generated makefile in any 
reasonably complex case would be highly dependant on the context in 
which make was run. This is really what eval is about - it generates 
makese on the fly. It would thus not necessarily be portable since 
context is unlikely to be the same elsewhere. However, the advantages of 
seeing what make really was working off once all the variables have been 
expanded, the evals evaluated, the calls called, and the shells 
whatever, would surely make this a worthwhile project.

Almost convincing myself to look at it.

Graham