Re: Extending Automake to build non-file objects?

[Zé]

On 06/14/2014 01:00 PM, Conrad Dean wrote:
> Hey!
>
> I have a project where I need to generate datasets that are not stored as
> flat files.  I can use  a CLI interface to generate them off of others and
> the same CLI to check when datasets were last modified.  I think I want to
> use automake to describe the relationships between datasets, and detect
> when an upstream dataset has been generated to update the downstream ones.
>
> Would make be a good fit for that? or is it too-closely tied to just
> dealing with files?
>
> Thanks!
> Conrad

As no one replied yet, here are my 0,02€.

Automake lets you specify makefile rules, as the contents of a 
Makefile.am are copied to Makefile.in verbatim[¹].

Therefore, if you can write a makefile that generates your datasets then 
you can extend automake to build them too.

And make certainly can generate your datasets.


Hope this helps,

--
Zé

[¹] http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/automake.html#Extending