Re: automake 1.7d feedback

[Paul D. Smith]

%% Bruno Haible <address@hidden> writes:

  bh> automake-1.7d is fine for me: I cannot find anything wrong with it.

  bh> However, there is an important change in behaviour that IMO should
  bh> be mentioned in the NEWS file (or maybe even undone): While it was
  bh> possible to add dependencies to automake targets in
  bh> automake-1.7.x, such dependencies are now interpreted as
  bh> *overriding* the automake definition. In usual Makefiles, when I
  bh> write

  bh>    target: dependencies
  bh>   RULES

  bh> then it overrides the original target definition if and only if the
  bh> RULES section is nonempty. This is a pitfall for users: While the
  bh> syntax of Makefile.am is the same as the syntax of Makefiles,
  bh> writing a line like

  bh>    target: dependencies

  bh> doesn't mean the same thing.

Speaking from the peanut gallery, with my GNU make hat on, I'd say this
is a bug.  I think it's important for automake to preserve standard make
functionality, at least in this very basic situation.  It's often
extremely useful to be able to separate the prerequisite definition from
the command script definition.

-- 
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