Re: GUI for make

[Garrett Cooper]

On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 6:30 AM, Sam Ravnborg <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 02, 2008 at 09:15:43AM -0500, Martin d Anjou wrote:
>> >Is there any existing project of a GUI for make?
>>
>> I don't know but the first thing that comes to mind is the kernel's "make
>> menuconfig". I've always been curious to understand how it worked.
>
> menuconfig of the kernel is a configuration tool and is not in
> any way a frontend for make.
>
> You use menuconfig to say what you want included in
> your kernel.
> This results in a file containing a lot of assignmnets
> like this:
>
> CONFIG_FOO = y
> CONFIG_BAR = m
>
>
> These assignmnets in combinations with some intellegent use
> of the features og gmake allow us in the kernel to
> use simle assignmnets to define what we want to build.
>
> A typical kbuild fragment looks like this:
>
> obj-$(CONFIG_FOO) += foo.o
>
> So if CONFIG_FOO expands to 'y' then we append
> obj-y the value foo.o and we use this to build
> what is requested.
>
> When you build the kernel you do two simple steps:
>
> "make menuconfig" to configure your kernel
> "make" to build your kernel.
>
>        Sam

makeconfig compiles and drives an ncurses frontend, so unless you want
to do it in C, good luck. No such thing in Make. Make isn't capable of
a repeating state FSM like a real programming language -- it's for
writing recipes as Paul Smith would say 8-).
-Garrett