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From: pcg@odin.cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi)
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Re: Compiler/make wishlist
Message-ID: <PCG.90Feb25202211@odin.cs.aber.ac.uk>
Date: 25 Feb 90 20:22:11 GMT
References: <1990Feb19.212249.10041@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu>
Sender: pcg@aber-cs.UUCP
Distribution: gnu
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In-reply-to: rcb@ccpv1.ncsu.edu's message of 19 Feb 90 21:22:49 GMT
Posting-Front-End: GNU Emacs 18.47.1 of Wed Mar 15 1989 on odin (berkeley-unix)

In article <1990Feb19.212249.10041@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> rcb@ccpv1.ncsu.edu (Randy Buckland) writes:

   After having some problems with make because I did not do a "make depend"
   I would like to request a wishlist item in the GNU tools. It would be
   very useful if the compilers and other tools that generate files (like
   bison) would be capable of writing to a user specified "dependancy" file
   that could contain all the dependancy info for all files in that directory.

This is all OK. On my part I would like to repeat my plea to RMS and
all the other GNU developers:

	Imitate Larry Wall and many others!

This means keeping sources under RCS (recently acquired to the GNU
fold), and making available baseline versions and patches to these,
and keeping a PATCHLEVEL define and file around.

I makes for much easier versioning for the developer, and much easier
tracking versions, reincoporating local changes, and less space and
bandwidth consumed (and also obviated the need for somewhat ugly and
confusing long directory names incorporating version numbers).

I understand that RMS may be sentimentally attached to ChangeLog and the
associated GNU Emacs mode, but there are also at least two fairly good
RCS modes around.

Or it may be a matter of preference; in that case I know a lot of people
vastly prefer the Larry Wall (with Rich Salz's makekit goody) way of
doing things.


Ah yes, another thing: if possible, don't have flat directory structures
for packages with many files. Have 'doc', 'lib', 'config' sub
directories, as this reduces (at least mine) confusion noticeably.
--
Piercarlo "Peter" Grandi           | ARPA: pcg%cs.aber.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth        | UUCP: ...!mcvax!ukc!aber-cs!pcg
Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk