Re: [PATCH] Modernize, improve and/or extend tests `colon*.test.

[Stefano Lattarini]

At Sunday 08 August 2010, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> > > Well, I'd prefer the extract_dependencies script approach
> > 
> > I like the idea, too, but as I said I'd prefer to leave for a
> > later patch.
> 
> That's fine of course.  Just leave the corresponding code unchanged
> then.
I'll revert it, and add back a proper FIXME.

> > > which would be more correct and not the complicated perl script
> > > which wasn't as correct.
> > 
> > Why not as correct?
> > 
> > You said in a previous mail:
> >  """
> >  
> >    A shell function in defs.in 'extract_makefile_deps TARGET
> >    FILE' that contains a sed script similar to
> >    extract_makefile_var that does what you want, and respects
> >    backslash-newline?
> >  
> >  """
> > 
> > But why should that function preserve backslash-newline
> > occurrences? Is not this an internal detail due to automatical
> > line-wrapping by Automake, which we should therefore ignore?
> 
> No, it is an official API of 'make' that we program against.  With
> 
>  tgt1 tgt2 \
>       tgt3 : dep1 dep2 \
>       dep3 \
>              dep4
> 
> Posix is perfectly clear about the list of targets
Should be "tgt1 tgt2 tgt3 tgt4", right?
> and the list of dependencies.
Should be "dep1 dep2 dep3 dep4", right?
> extract_makefile_deps can extract that.
I still don't understand how this qualifies as an objection to my 
proposal.
 
> You're then still relying on not having $(macros) in the lists, so
> there is still an internal detail there, but I don't know how to
> avoid that easily.
> 
> An even much more better check would be to only check semantics,
> i.e., that some target is actually updated when some dependency is
> outdated.
Added a FIXME comment about that too.

Regards,
  Stefano