[MPlayer-dev-eng] recursive make considered harmful

[Bryan Henderson]

On 6/4/08, Diego Biurrun <diego at biurrun.de> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 04, 2008 at 02:37:17AM +0000, Bryan Henderson wrote:
>> I'd like to point out a serious flaw in Miller's paper.  It's somewhat
>> of a strawman argument, as he describes half a dozen ways to do
>> recursive make incorrectly and concludes that recursive make is bad.
>
> It is bad.

You missed my point.  I did not say recursive make is not bad.  I
criticized the logic of the paper.

> Why would you want to run make recursively in the first place?

I didn't say I (or one) did.

>> To do recursive make correctly, you have to invoke make on every
>> dependency that is in another directory.  Make
>> either rebuilds the dependency or determines that it doesn't have to
>> be rebuilt.
>
> Good luck implementing that correctly.

Doesn't require luck; just skill.  I've done it many times, both from
scratch and correcting other people's failed (or maybe just
approximate) attempts.

> You're basically saying that you can either do things correctly or fix a
> broken strategy with a lot of kludging and then hope for the best.

No, I said you can do it correctly with or without recursive make.
Unless by "correct" you mean "the proper way," in which case I didn't
state an opinion.