Re: Non-recursive makefiles

[Stefan Puiu]

HI all,

I find some of the information in this thread quite useful, especially
since I was considering to move some of our project files to
non-recursive makefiles. I understand the downsides - silly variable
names in subdir makefiles, which are also tied to the respective
directory and require change when relocating, speed... Our directory
structure (don't ask why, not my decision) is something like:
somemodule/src/pkgsomepackage, with interesting stuff built in pkg...
directories, so you can imagine how ugly targets and variables in
those dirs will look like - ugh. So yes, I think the import feature
would definitely be useful in this respect.

However, people haven't mentioned yet the main point in Peter Miller's
paper - dependency handling, which I think is very important (I would
say significantly more important than the ability to type "make clean"
in one directory). Most people I work with are more familiar with
Windows Visual Studio projects, and they are used to a system where
changing a file triggers the rebuilding of the exact files that
require it - so the intention would be to achieve something similar on
Linux. However, this currently doesn't work with our recursive
automake setup, and I always find myself typing "make -C
somemodule/src/pkgsomepackage && make -C bin" - and that I can do when
I know what will be affected. It would be nice to have to only type
"make".

We also have separate directories for basic tests and unit tests, and
those also require libraries in the main source directory. We would
also like to be able to handle those. There is also a problem inherent
to the project - the dependency graph between modules is very messy,
so we can't really separate independent modules.

So, my question would be: how do people mix recursive makefiles with
dependency handling? Or in hybrid approaches?

Stefan.

On 5/24/06, Morrison <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hear hear!  After spending a fair bit of time considering the non-
> recursive makefile approach for a rather complex project, I was
> almost inclined to write up a rebuttal to Peter Miller's politicized
> rant regarding recursive make.