Re: GNU Make Extensions

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* NightStrike wrote on Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 04:25:58PM CET:
> 
> If automake has the ability to flatten the += syntax so that
> non-portable make advances can be used, why can't the same logic apply
> to wildcard usage?  The biggest argument against it that I've heard is
> that it is a GNU-only option.

The biggest arguments are listed in the FAQ entry aptly named
'wildcards'.

As already mentioned elsewhere, there is another argument: semantically
it seems a bad idea to let the output of 'automake' depend on arbitrary
files.  It already depends on configure.ac, more macro files,
Makefile.am and included files, and some texinfo input files' contents,
and the presence of a couple of files.  The latter two items are
extremely ugly I would say, if only because users tend not to be aware
of this, and bugs in this area thus are harder to reproduce.

I would be very hard pressed to introduce more such issues.

Cheers,
Ralf