Large non-recursive make not scaling. Patch.

[Corey Brenner]

Hello,

I have been involved in a project where I set up a very large tree using
GNU make nonrecursively.  The goals I set out for the tree were to emulate
union builds, and to emulate the simplicity of recursive makefiles using
non-recursive make.

I achieved both, but ran into a problem of the main variable hash not
scaling well when setting up variable "namespaces" (in reality, a large
variable name, including relative path,) when the build went past a couple
of thousand directories.

I have implemented a PATRICIA trie for GNU Make, to take care of the
problem caused by linear probing in the global hash.  I have attached
patches against the 3.81 release, and tonight's CVS.

I would like some feedback for this patch, to see if it helps others.
What steps do I need to take to assign copyright of this code to FSF, so
that it may become a mainline part of GNU make, should it prove helpful?

Thank you,

Corey Brenner

ptrie.diff-3.81
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ptrie.diff-cvs
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