Re: [bug #17873] .NOTPARALLEL enhancements

[David Fang]

> Follow-up Comment #3, bug #17873 (project make):
>
> Haven't been paying a lot of attention, but when is such a lame thing nas
> .NOTPARALLEL needed? Why aren't people just writing proper dependencies so
> that parallel/serial is irrelevant?

Example:

In my experience, I frequently build pdf and ps documents from the same
latex sources, via latex and pdflatex. Unfortunately, the intermediate
auxiliary files they produce are not compatible with each other (latex vs.
pdflatex), thus, I use .NOTPARALLEL: foo.pdf foo.dvi, and use a last-build
stamp mechanism to clobber the .aux when needed.  Everywhere else, I write
'proper' dependencies, and make -j.  :)

BTW, this might be off-topic for this thread, but has anyone looked into
randomized ordering of dependency-building?  (*GASP* why on earth would
anyone want to do that!?)  I've noticed that SCons has this feature, but
it might come in handy for verifying that a makefile is "properly
written."

Fang