[Newbie] Getting involved

[thutt]

Måns Ansgariusson writes:
 > Hello!
 >
 > I have an idea of some features I'd like to see in make. I'm no expert at all
 > regarding make so I hope I don't reinvent the wheel or come with to stupid
 > ideas.
 > I'd be happy to implement it but I'm not sure if these are desirable
 > features or where to start.
 >
 > Proposed features:
 > 1. Saving build information

 <snip>

 Make is stateless by design.

 It is possible to do what you want with Gnu Make, already, though.
 See 'Rebuilding when CPPFLAGS changes' in "Gnu Make Unleashed".


 >
 > 2. Command execution should inherit from the previous shells in its 
 > dependency
 > graph

 <snip>


 This can be done with 'pattern-specific' and 'target-specific'
 variables.


 > 3. Target a specific subsystem
 >     I'm a really lazy bastard and this might be going against the original 
 > idea
 >     of make but here it goes. What if we could target just one subsystem 
 > with a
 >     specific rule given an input parameter to make.
 >     An example:
 >     ....
 >     CFLAGS = -Wall -Wextra -std=c99 -Wno-format -Wno-parentheses
 >     ....
 >     debug: CFLAGS += -DDEBUG -g
 >     debug: all
 >     .....
 >     make debug --src=src/subsystem
 >     .....
 >     Given I have a large software project and I know I have a bug in
 >     a specific subsystem I would like to be able to add the debug options 
 > only
 >     to that specific build system. Again this is perhaps more of a software
 >     solution that the software project by itself take care of but I'm just
 >     throwing the idea out there.
 >

 This is accomplished by making a target that will build just 'src/subsystem'.