Re: Plan for single Makefile

[Tom Tromey]

>>>>> "Pavel" == Pavel Roskin <address@hidden> writes:

>> I've spent some time thinking about how we can change Automake to
>> support a single large Makefile, but still keep a Makefile.am in each
>> directory for maintainability.

Pavel> I would argue that some people may prefer many Makefiles so
Pavel> that "make" can be run in every directory, but a single
Pavel> Makefile.am, just like single configure.in exactly for the same
Pavel> reason, for maintainability.

We probably won't be doing this.  I don't see any real benefit in it.
The reason to generate a single large Makefile is performance.
Having multiple Makefiles is inherently slow.
You can already write a single large Makefile.am if you want.
My guess is that this will be a pain to maintain, since you'll have to
add all kinds of subdir information all over it.  However, I'd be
interested in hearing the actual experiences of anybody who tries it.
Perhaps the `import' plan isn't really necessary.

Pavel> Anyway, I would like to see Automake 1.5 (or should it be 1.6
Pavel> to be similar to linux/gimp/gtk versioning?) released first.

Don't worry.  I'm not adding any new features right now.  There are
one or two bugs I'd like to try to fix (computed auxdir, for which
there's a test; and maybe the libffi problem pointed out on the bug
list), and there are still some doc changes to make.  Those are the
only things blocking 1.5.

Tom