Re: [bug #17873] .NOTPARALLEL enhancements

[Howard Chu]

David Fang wrote:
> > Follow-up Comment #3, bug #17873 (project make):
> >
> > Haven't been paying a lot of attention, but when is such a lame thing nas
> > .NOTPARALLEL needed? Why aren't people just writing proper dependencies so
> > that parallel/serial is irrelevant?
> >     
>
> Example:
>
> In my experience, I frequently build pdf and ps documents from the same
> latex sources, via latex and pdflatex. Unfortunately, the intermediate
> auxiliary files they produce are not compatible with each other (latex vs.
> pdflatex), thus, I use .NOTPARALLEL: foo.pdf foo.dvi, and use a last-build
> stamp mechanism to clobber the .aux when needed.  Everywhere else, I write
> 'proper' dependencies, and make -j.  :)
>   

Thanks for that example. (Though for your specific case, since pdf is 
essentially entropy-coded postscript, you shouldn't need to rerun latex 
to generate it.) I guess if we're stuck with dumb programs that generate 
intermediate files whose names can't be changed on the command line, 
then this sort of approach is the only way out.

> BTW, this might be off-topic for this thread, but has anyone looked into
> randomized ordering of dependency-building?  (*GASP* why on earth would
> anyone want to do that!?)  I've noticed that SCons has this feature, but
> it might come in handy for verifying that a makefile is "properly
> written."
>   

Yes, I've suggested this a number of times in the past. Never formally 
in a bug report, but #17881 which I just submitted lists that as well.

--
 -- Howard Chu
 Chief Architect, Symas Corp.  http://www.symas.com
 Director, Highland Sun        http://highlandsun.com/hyc
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