>>>>> "David" == David Boyce <dsb@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:
David> I'm not sure if it's not already too late to make alternate
David> suggestions, but I'd prefer a design which does not require
David> modifying the makefile. After all, the method of determining
David> out-of-dateness (hereafter OOD) is orthogonal from what the
David> makefile encodes, which is simply (a) what files depend on what
David> other files and (b) what commands to run when an OOD situation
David> is discovered.
Unfortunately that isn't as true as we might like. Many, many
Makefiles work around the current lack of content signatures using the
stamp file technique. (By "many" I mean, to first approximation, all
Makefiles generated by automake.)
I think the stamp file approach would break with a content-based OOD
algorithm, because the stamp file contents do not change.
Naturally, this can be fixed. (And perhaps automake rewritten as a
set of GNU make macros ... but that's for another summer :-) Still, it
does indicate that changing algorithms is not transparent.
Tom
|
