Re: src/Makefile unhelpful

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Sat, 10 Sep 2022 23:38:14 -0400
> 
>   > The command is quite long, so outputting it even once will write a lot
>   > of stuff to the screen, stuff that we almost always ignore.
> 
> That is normal for output from make.  Most of the output from make, we
> normally ignore.

Not anymore.  Many/most GNU projects migrated to the short form you
see in Emacs years ago, and as result the build process of many
projects is much less chatty nowadays.

These short forms use Make macros defined by Automake, so it isn't
something specific to Emacs.  The only Emacs-specific aspects are the
commands that aren't seen in other builds, like byte-compilation --
for those we invented our own short names.  But C/C++ compilation,
linking, production of auto-generated files, etc. -- all this is used
by many other GNU projects.

>   > It's a general Autoconf-based solution many/all GNU projects use, so
>   > if we want to change that to something more memorable, we should
>   > change that across the board.
> 
> In reaching that conclusion you have implicitly rejected other kinds
> of solutions.  Unfortunately, this one has a fatal flaw: the autotools
> don't have a lot of people working on them.  If there were a good
> solution in Autoconf or Automake, it would probably not get
> implemented.

Nevertheless, the problem you raise is common to all GNU projects
using autotools.  So, regardless of whether we implement our own
solution for that, I think you should raise that on the autotools
forum.  IMO, problems should be raised even if we don't believe they
will be worked on, just so people knew and acknowledged that they
exist, and that problems they themselves experience are not their
private ones.