discussion of recursive make

[Ross Lippert]

I already know I am posting to the wrong list, but I was not sure
where the right forum for discussion is, so I would appreciate
being pointed in the right direction.

I read this "Recursive Make Considered Harmful" paper
by P. Miller.  An interesting and thought provoking read for me.

I looked on the web and saw a few examples of hacks people
employed to get make (usually gmake) to be harmlessly recursive.

After discovering the $(eval ) command in gmake, I found I
was able to write a harmless recursive Makefile which allowed
for all the things I think Miller's paper outlined, proper
dependency analysis, no unnecessary rebuilds, and so on.

I am pretty sure that this Makefile could not be as cleanly
acheived without the $(eval ) command, and since the command
is fairly recent and fairly broken (unless patched), I figure
this might not be something other people have figured out
how to do.

So, I think I'd like to get feedback from expert make-ers
out there on this Makefile and how I could do things better.


Thanks,

-r