Re: distclean should walk subdirs in reverse order

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Sat, 9 Mar 2013, Harlan Stenn wrote:
> I'm not suggesting a single flat file for a non-recursive Makefile
> situation.
>
> I'm expecting there to be one Makefile in each directory.
>
> I'd also almost expect that the Makfile in each (build) directory would
> "call up" to the top-level Makefile with enough information to build the
> desired target.
>
> I'd also expect that the top-level Makefile would "source in" enough
> information from a file in each subdir (possibly not the Makefile) to
> figure out the entire dependency and build situation.

All of this can be accomplished with Automake but you will need to add 
the 'call up' plain Makefiles yourself to request building only the 
targets corresponding to that part of the tree.

As a non-recursive Automake user for many years, I would never go 
back.  I have not bothered with the 'per target' Makefiles because the 
build system is much smarter now and it only builds the parts which 
need to be rebuilt.  If more gets built than absolutely necessary for 
the current task, it is not a problem because I use 'make -j 18' and 
the optimized debuggable build completes so quickly (< 10 seconds for 
whole thing) that I don't care.  Before, quite a few seconds were 
wasted accomplishing nothing useful at all.

Bob
--
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/