[RFC] build system replacement

Bernd Schmidt bernds_cb1 at t-online.de
Sat May 31 11:55:35 UTC 2008


Denys Vlasenko wrote:

> As I said, I am not obsessed with build system replacement.
> I started it as a necessity because I was bitten several times with
> the modification of files not being detected.
> 
> I thought that it is a sign that build system is not maintained
> and is bit rotting.
> 
> After recent events (your fix and my testing) I now see that
> 
> 1. There are people (you) who understand and maintain
>    current build system;

I wouldn't go that far.  It's just that whenever I've had to look at it 
I've found it quite easy to work with - there are much worse ones out 
there (cough glibc cough).  My point is simply that being able to 
understand and modify existing code is a necessity; a rewrite from 
scratch is likely to introduce more problems in the short term than it 
can solve.

> 2. The breakage is not as widespread as I thought - actually,
>    all .c files are properly tracked. Or almost all -
>    I did not check all possibilities, maybe there are a few more
>    obscure .config's with problems.
> 
>> Adding header file dependencies would be a good thing.  IMO, if it can 
>> be done within the existing framework, that's better than throwing 
>> everything out.
> 
> Are you willing to look into it?

I'm not really a make expert, and I didn't intend to become maintainer 
when I submitted a patch...

The patch below copies over just enough parts of the glibc dependency 
system to make it work on simple cases in uClibc (tested by touching 
include/mntent.h and watching it rebuild only five files).  It's 
probably uglier and less efficient than it needs to be; I doubt it 
tracks all object files, and it doesn't integrate with "make clean".

Finishing the job is left as an exercise for the reader :-)


Bernd
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