Re: Finding Circular Dependencies

[Alexander Kriegisch]

Risking to be a bit off-topic...

> Unfortunately, I can't get the graphviz stuff to work

Installing all necessary modules via CPAN install should help. Check the
web site for the dependency list, download and unpack all necessary CPAN
modules and call the sequence
  perl Makefile.PL
  make
  make test
  sudo make install
I had to install the following stuff on my system:
  GraphViz-2.03
  Makefile-GraphViz-0.16
  Makefile-Parser-0.17
  List-MoreUtils-0.22
Some might be available as Linux packages, otherwise you can download
them from CPAN.

> and the .flt file only contains dependencies AFTER make has
> already removed circular dependencies.

Well, with a little luck my tool can use your makefile as its input
directly, either with or without filtering it (in the latter case using
it as .flt file). It depends on how complicated the makefile is and
which types of expansion it uses. This way you can catch your circular
dependencies *before* make eliminates them.

But I strongly agree that it would be much better to have GNU Make
handle this directly.
--
Alexander Kriegisch
Certified ScrumMaster
http://scrum-master.de