Re: [RFC] .NOT_DEFAULT: target

[Boris Kolpackov]

Paul D. Smith <address@hidden> writes:
 
> The way I typically solve this is that I always define the target I want
> to be the default first, with no prerequisites etc.  Simply putting
> something like:
> 
>     all:
> 
> by itself at the top of the first makefile is enough to force make to
> consider that target to be the default.  So, in your example you could
> change your makefile to:
> 
>     # file: makefile
>     all:
>     include boostrap.make
>     all: $(out_root)/driver
>     $(out_root)/driver: driver.c

There are two issues with this approach

  - Now make prints "nothing to be done for all" instead of 
    "driver is up to date" which is bad (well, if you care).

  - User makefiles are bloated with those unnecessary all's.
 

> Alternatively, if you have a makefile which is always included at the
> top (say your bootstrap.make file) you can put the "all" target in that
> file as the first thing:

Now you are forcing user to use the same name for default target which is
not always acceptable (well, at least not in my case). 

 
> Mm.  I don't know about this.  It seems like it's the wrong way
> around... if what you want to have is the default target, why have
> people declare everything that _cannot_ be the default?  Why not just
> declare what _IS_ the default?

A few thoughts:


   - .NOT_DEFAULT is meant for the build system developers, not "people" ;-). 
     Now GNU make has powerful enough inclusions/scripting mechanisms that
     make "generic" build systems possible. There are however features
     that are still <makefile-is-one-big-file>-minded. "Default target is
     first target" is one of them.

   - Default target is the choice of a user makefile not the build system.
     So default target is most likely going to be specified in a user
     makefile. Putting it in other words, targets declared by the build 
     system should not be default. That's why we may want a mechanism to 
     express that.

To summarize: the default target is defined by a user makefile and there 
is already a mechanism for doing that. Included makefiles need to say that
targets are not default and this mechanism is lacking.


I agree that it could be considered more logical to have explicit 
declaration for default targets:

.DEFAULT: $(out_dir)/driver

I think it is roughly equivalent to .NOT_DEFAULT: except it would lead
to a bit more verbose user makefiles (.NOT_DEFAULT: would be used in a
*few* system files while .DEFAULT: will be used in *each* user makefile).
And it wouldn't be backward compatible, of course ;-).


thanks,
-boris

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