🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <rantapaa.707088491@s6.math.umn.edu>, plains!s6.math.umn.edu!rantapaa@uunet.uu.net (Erik E. Rantapaa) writes:
|>Here are some thoughts I've been having about GNU make but could pertain
|>to makes all over the world.  I would be interested in what y'all would
|>have to say about them.
|> 
|>[For those of you unfamilar with GNU make, $(shell cmd args...)
|>expands to the output of the 'cmd args...' in the default shell.]
|> ...
|>#1. I would like to specify when a target is out of date rather than
|>being restricted to make's default rules.  Has anyone thought of
|>enhancing make to allow for, say, variable expansion to determine if
|>a target is out of date?  For example, the syntax
|>
|>  x : d1 d2 d3 &$(shell SCRIPT)
|>
|>would tell make that target x is out of date if any of d1, d2, d3 is
|>older than x or if the expansion of $(shell SCRIPT) is non-blank.
|>
|>But, since make doesn't have this feature...
|>	
|>#2. Suppose I have the following declaration in a make file:
|>
|>  .PHONY: x
|>  x : $(shell SCRIPT)
|>	$(rules)
|>
|>The idea is that the command SCRIPT will determine if x is up to date
|>and that its output will direct make to execute $(rules) or not.

Yes yes yes - this is precisely the reason that we don't use make on my
project, and precisely the reason that I've spent countless days writing
a replacement to make.

I would also add another request - that make be able to distribute jobs
across nodes in a network.  I don't mind giving make the command to decide
what systems are available, and I don't mind giving it the method to
perform remote execution (typically it will be some variant on "rsh")
although it would be nice if make could work this out for itself, given
standard Unix commands.
GNU make already has the -j option, so how difficult would it be to
add this extra feature?

Lezz "no signature yet" Giles