[bug #33034] "Makefile:23: *** mixed implicit and normal rules. Stop." for Linux kernel out of source builds

[David Boyce]

Follow-up Comment #11, bug #33034 (project make):

Frank,

I agree with some of your points but there was a bit of cherrypicking involved
in the quoting:

> ... really, what's the chance a trivial one-line change to the top-level
makefile will actually break your driver?

I'm not sure you realize the scale here. It's not a change to just the
top-level makefile, the pattern is repeated in a number of makefiles. A quick
find shows 1360 makefiles in a typical Linux (2.6.36) kernel and as I
mentioned we have "dozens or hundreds" of copies of such kernels. There are an
unknown number of places where this pattern occurs and the placement and
formatting may vary, possibly even with line wrapping.

At least in our case, because these are so large and (supposed to be)
unchanging we haven't stored them in version control; they're in flat file
space aka NFS. With this many files to fix it would be necessary to write a
program which could reliably find all mixed rule lines and fix them right the
first time. The fact that they're not version controlled makes the stakes
higher.

Yes, all these problems are solvable but it's a substantial project and very
likely way more work than patching make.

> I don't suppose Paul would accept a patch that just reinstates the old
behaviour without fixing it.) 

Of course not, that's been made quite clear and it makes sense. But what you
left out from my comment was the question of whether it could be optionally
unfixed at runtime. We all get that the old behavior was broken, but this
happens to be a case where preserving bug-for-bug compatibility is important
to many users.

> I've long accepted that Debian isn't useful to me out of the box...

I don't think this point was specific to Debian; rather, it was intended as an
illustration of the fact that 3+ years after 3.82 was released it still hasn't
gained widespread acceptance. Many environments are sticking with 3.81 and I
suspect this is one of the factors.

David

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