Re: [Automake-NG] Removal of INCLUDES in favour of AM_CPPFLAGS

[Eric Blake]

On 02/01/2013 05:00 PM, Peter Rosin wrote:
> 
> And in fact, I just expressed how I think removing support for
> INCLUDES is wrong, for *both* projects!

I agree that removing it from automake is counterproductive.  But I
support removing it from Automake-NG - as long as we are moving to a
newer environment, we can afford to modernize and get rid of namespace
pollution.

> but supporting INCLUDES will never hinder progress (I
> fail to see how anyway).

Namespace cleanliness in Automake-NG is a nice goal, one where it is
worth warning about (but not removing) use of INCLUDES in Automake in
order to make it easier to switch to Automake-NG.  It may turn out that
in Automake-NG, supporting INCLUDES costs a lot more clutter than
desirable.  Remember, in Automake-NG, we use GNU make features, such as
the ability to easily iterate over all targets that match a certain glob
pattern - but this only works if a pattern is easy to write.  It is easy
to glob for all things beginning with AM_, but harder if you have to
special-case for outliers like INCLUDES.

> To me, the change was made just because
> it was perceived as messy or redundant. But the messiest part
> of the removed code was the deprecation warning. Carrying on
> with the support for INCLUDES in automake costs nearly nothing.

I agree that _in automake_, carrying support for INCLUDES costs almost
nothing, since we already have code to detect INCLUDES, and since we
already have to issue warnings about using INCLUDES.

> Supporting INCLUDES in automake-NG costs nearly nothing.

This, however, is a statement I'm not willing to concede; so while I
agree with the decision to deprecate (but not remove) INCLUDES from
automake, I think it is fair game to state that someone switching to
Automake-NG should be prepared to avoid INCLUDES, as part of that switch.

> 
> All in my humble opinion, of source. Errm, of course.

Same goes for me :)

> 
> Cheers,
> Peter
> 
> PS. Keep up the good work.

Likewise, I applaud your efforts on both automake and Automake-NG, and
hope that we can get automake stable enough that you can spend some fun
time with Automake-NG.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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