Re: Java class files, again

[Steve M. Robbins]

On Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 11:19:29PM -0500, Eric Siegerman wrote:

> Java requires a dependency model beyond what make can easily
> support:
>   - a "makedepend" program for Java pretty much has to be a full
>     parser, to notice that any reference to some class Foo makes
>     This.class depend on .../com/blarfl/Foo.class.  There was
>     such a program kicking around at one point, called javadeps
>     (aka jdeps).  But even that's unpleasant in practice; Java's
>     dependencies change a lot more frequently than do #include's
>     in C, so you have to "make depend" far too often.
> 
>   - Java can easily have circular dependencies; they require all
>     .java files in the circle to be compiled by the same compiler
>     process

IIRC, javadeps does handle circular dependencies.

I'm a little surprised that, after all this time, the various java
compilers don't have the equivalent of "gcc -M".  Is that really
the case?

-S