Re: Large project support

[Tom Tromey]

>>>>> "Richard" == Richard Boulton <address@hidden> writes:

Richard> Surely one thing we could do is to implement wildcards that
Richard> are evaluated at the time that automake is run.

Just to be clear, I thought that was the only kind under
consideration.  I don't think there's any way we could implement
wildcards at make time.

Richard> It is still true that it would be impossible to ensure that
Richard> the Makefile.in is regenerated when a new source file is
Richard> added, but I would imagine it is rare to add a new source
Richard> file to a project without modifying any of the existing
Richard> source files.

It happens all the time for test suites.  For instance, automake's.
Or any of several that appear in gcc.

Also this happens a lot in libjava, where we sometimes add a new .java
file without touching anything else.  I imagine the same is true for
many Java libraries.


For automake I often make test cases I don't check in.  Having these
be picked up in Makefile.in would be pretty bad -- it would break the
build.  So the next step will be someone suggesting that $(awildcard)
needs to know how to look at CVS files only.  Bleah.  (This is a glum
prediction, not an actual argument against -- we can always say "no"
when that comes along.)


That said, I'm still open to understanding why people want this.  Are
there projects where adding a new line to Makefile.am is a significant
burden?  What's an example of one?

Tom