incremental compilation

[sharan basappa]

Hi All,

Currently I am using a tool that is used to generate execs for hardware 
description languages.

The tool also handles incremental compilation. Essentially I am able to make 
out the following
points

1) the tool does not use time stamps to find out outdated objects (in 
whatever form he maintains)

2) it finds out if the file being compiled is different from file that was 
compiled last time.

3) it looks like the tool really does not maintain copy of last compiled 
source file but
it talks about some descriptor or such as. Its possible that tool maintains 
a signature
for each source file and recalculates signature when same file is submitted 
for compilation
again and deduces from that whether a compliation is required or not.

4) he uses make to manage compilation

My question is :

1) whether the tool is trying to be more intelligent than what is possible 
within the
framework of make (no offense intended to make gurus)

2) is it possible within make framework to bypass make's method of finding 
outdated objects
and use our own method to find out this and still use make to simply kick 
off
one or more commands.

Regards,
Sharan

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