Re: MAKE_RESTARTS design question

[Paul D. Smith]

%% "Frink, Alexander " <address@hidden> writes:

  fa> Why is MAKE_RESTARTS designed as is, i.e. empty before the first
  fa> restart, then 1, 2, ...?  Wouldn't it be better to set it to 0 for
  fa> the first iteration?  Then it would not be necessary to resort on
  fa> the literal check on the version number to test if it is available
  fa> at all.

I dunno; it never occurred to me.  In GNU make variables, an empty
variable false, while a variable with any value (even "0") is true.
It's not easy to do math in GNU make.  I guess I was anticipating people
would be more likely to do something like:

    ifdef MAKE_RESTARTS
        ... do something different if we've restarted ...
    endif

Of course you could almost as easily use:

    ifeq ($(MAKE_RESTARTS),0)
        ... do something different if we've restarted ...
    endif

to get the same effect if your suggestion were followed.

It's just the way it was done...

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