(no subject)

[Eli Zaretskii]

(message from Matt Lavoie on Tue, 6 Apr 2004 07:32:53 -0700)
Subject: Re: gnumake and tabs
Reply-to: Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden>
References:  <address@hidden>

> From: Matt Lavoie <address@hidden>
> Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2004 07:32:53 -0700
> 
> Toward that end:
>       (1) Is there a build option for gnumake to make tabs unimportant in
> makefiles?
>       (2) Is the parser tightly coupled to the use of tabs?

The special meaning of TABs is IIRC mandated by Posix, so breaking
that would need a very good reason.  Using brain-dead editors is IMHO
not one of them.

The real reason behind insisting on TABs is that many Makefiles used
to build programs for X indent variable assignments, like this:

                  FOO = bar
               FOOBAR = barfoo

etc., you get the point.  (Actually, I think such Makefiles are
produced by Imake, but I'm not sure.)  You can easily see that if Make
treats such lines as commands, it will be a disaster.