Re: Expanded rules for scripts

[Akim Demaille]

| Hello, Akim!
| > This patch is fine with me.  But really, I'd like to see a comment in
| > Makefile.am explaining why we do this, and, more importantly, report
| > the precise problem in the documentation.
| 
| Here it is, but keep in mind that I'm not really strong in writing
| documentation :-(

How sweet it is to see you so shy :)

| Not sure if make-stds.texi is "our" file. It's rewritten by "wget-update"
| 
| ChangeLog:
|         * Makefile.am: Added a comment before rules for scripts.
|         * doc/make-stds.texi (Makefile Basics): Mention limitations of
|         suffix rules.
| 
| ____________________________
| Index: Makefile.am
| --- Makefile.am       Wed Dec 13 09:34:13 2000
| +++ Makefile.am       Wed Dec 13 10:59:20 2000
| @@ -124,6 +124,10 @@
|         -e 's,@VERSION\@,$(VERSION),g' \
|         -e 's,@PACKAGE\@,$(PACKAGE),g'
| 
| +# We are using explicit rules to make sure that all the scripts are rebuilt
| +# when the version number changes in configure.in. Suffix rules cannot have
| +# additional dependencies.
| +
|  autoconf: $(srcdir)/autoconf.sh $(srcdir)/configure.in
|         rm -f autoconf autoconf.tmp
|         $(editsh) $(srcdir)/autoconf.sh >autoconf.tmp
| Index: doc/make-stds.texi
| --- doc/make-stds.texi        Wed Oct  4 08:42:34 2000
| +++ doc/make-stds.texi        Wed Dec 13 10:57:12 2000
| @@ -62,6 +62,12 @@
|  The first line clears out the suffix list, the second introduces all
|  suffixes which may be subject to implicit rules in this Makefile.
| 
| +Suffix rules cannot have any additional dependencies.  It may be
| +tempting to write an explicit rule without commands that would add those
| +dependencies.  However, you should not do so, since @sc{bsd} make will
| +completely ignore the suffix rule for those targets, even if the
| +explicit rule has no commands.
| +
|  Don't assume that @file{.} is in the path for command execution.  When
|  you need to run programs that are a part of your package during the
|  make, please make sure that it uses @file{./} if the program is built as
| ____________________________

I really meant the Autoconf documentation.  You call also suggest this
patch to RMS for make-stds.texi, but I was referring to `known
limitations of common tools'.