Now that the Google summer of code is finished, here are some
proposals for the future.
- Filenames with spaces. This does not look very difficult.
- A easier syntax. The syntax of tabs for recipes is awkward in modern
times. It is confusing for starters. Backward compatibility can be
preserved with command line options and flags in rules. With this
change, I would also include executing the lines of a single recipe in
a single shell invocation. This would make it easier to write recipes
in alternative languages like Python, Perl o Tcl.
- Some mechanism to make it easier to make high level rules, which are
equivalent to a set of lower level rules, but conceptually close to
what the developer intends. Something closer to ant. In ant, one
writes some like:
<target name="compile" depends="init"
description="compile the source " >
<!-- Compile the java code from ${src} into ${build} -->
<javac srcdir="${src}" destdir="${build}"/>
</target>
which is more or less equivalent to
compile: init
javac ....
Except that javac is not a just command: instead javac is a piece of
java code that evaluates dependencies dynamically.
What I have in mind now is something that allows a target to
determinate dyncamilly some of its dependencies when called. For
instance, a builtin variable .MORE_PREREQS that is evaluated to render
a list of prerequisites at run time
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