Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!mcdphx!varese.UUCP!kjj From: kjj@varese.UUCP (Kevin Johnson) Newsgroups: comp.software-eng Subject: Re: Anyone know of a "better" 'make' than vanilla System-V's?. Message-ID: <13747@mcdphx.phx.mcd.mot.com> Date: 6 Oct 90 17:35:44 GMT References: <1990Oct3.000440.5275@hades.ausonics.oz.au> Sender: listen@mcdphx.phx.mcd.mot.com Reply-To: kjj@varese.UUCP (Kevin Johnson) Organization: Motorola Microcomputer Division, Tempe, Az. Lines: 41 In article <1990Oct3.000440.5275@hades.ausonics.oz.au> greyham@hades.ausonics.oz.au (Greyham Stoney) writes: >* The Makefile is assumed to reside in the current directory and each Makefile > must contain the rules saying how to make objects, since make's > built-in rules aren't right. We have well over 100 Makefiles in >[...] Yes, the default location for make's dep-file is the current directory, but it's changeable on the command line. This is nothing an alias won't solve. Another trick is to do what imake does and provide a mechanism where a front-end dep-file file is preprocessed with cpp, m4 or whatever... Out of curiosity, in what way are make's builtin rules 'not right'? >* Dependancies must be explicitly listed in the Makefile; and they are never > kept up to date: No ammount of forcing people is going to keep them up > to date, and it's a pretty pointless exercise anyway. In order to > control the rules with which our objects are made, we delta Makefiles > which makes it even worse since to update the depenancies you have to > get the thing for editing. Why can't the dependancies be discerned > from the source file at make time?. Well, if you weren't concerned about the overhead of checking dependancies at make-time I guess you do it that way... I just run makedepend whenever I modify the include directives in a module... >Are there any make-like systems that conquer these two basic problems?. I've starting using dmake, which I got off one of the source groups on USENET (sorry, I don't remember which one). I've been it for about a month now with no real problems. It's a considerable improvement over trad make. I think it's well worth looking into. I got it off on the source groups on USENET. The author's name is Dennis Vadura. The version I got on USENET has a GNU LICENCE file - so. I'm sure some archive has snarfed a copy. #include .-----------------------------------------------------------------------------. | Kevin Johnson ...!mcdphx!QIS1!kjj | | QIS System Administrator Motorola MCD kjj@phx.mcd.mot.com |