Xref: utzoo comp.sources.wanted:16360 comp.sources.d:6844 Newsgroups: comp.sources.wanted,comp.sources.d Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!think.com!mintaka!bloom-picayune.mit.edu!athena.mit.edu!jik From: jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) Subject: Re: anyone want to redesign make? In-Reply-To: fangchin@elaine54.Stanford.EDU's message of Sat, 20 Apr 91 17:14:01 GMT Message-ID: Followup-To: comp.sources.d Sender: news@athena.mit.edu (News system) Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology References: <1991Apr20.171401.16032@leland.Stanford.EDU> Date: Sun, 21 Apr 91 07:03:19 GMT Lines: 49 (Note cross-post and Followup-To.) In article <1991Apr20.171401.16032@leland.Stanford.EDU> fangchin@elaine54.Stanford.EDU (Chin Fang) writes: Handling large project with src scattered all over the places has been a problem in the MIT Athena Project, "MIT Project Athena," not "the MIT Athena Project." :-) and one solution proposed and now heavily used is the imake(n) utility (should I put it in imake(1)?). Yes. One of the most important features of what Project Athena has done is that since we support several different platforms, our source code must compile on all of those platforms. The same Makefile can't be used on Multiple platforms, and the solution we ended up using is Imake. I suspect that the first big use of Imake was the X Consortium's -- The sources distributed by the Consortium (which, by the way, is now separate from Project Athena, although X started out at Athena) are completely Imake-based, and you have to build Imake and use it to build the X distribution. Since X started using it, Athena has distributed the Kerberos, Zephyr and OLC packages using Imake too. Imake does solve many of the problems in make. However, in my opinion it is not the optimal solution. The learning curve is steep Yup. This is one reason I'm not convinced it's the optimal solution. What I've discovered is that the huge Imake template and rules files that generally come with a distribution are very daunting and scare people away from learning it. However, when people realize that they don't have to understand how all the rules files work, just how to pick the right rules in their Imakefiles, things suddenly get much easier. but it DOES do what's designed to. Yes. Unfortunately, I don't think it's designed to solve *all* of the problems with make that have been mentioned here. Jonathan Kamens USnail: MIT Project Athena 11 Ashford Terrace jik@Athena.MIT.EDU Allston, MA 02134 Office: 617-253-8085 Home: 617-782-0710