OT: Recursive Make Considered Harmful (OT?)

Bengt Kleberg bengt.kleberg@REDACTED
Wed Dec 16 14:42:39 CET 2009 

Greetings,

Perhaps you would consider moving this off the list? I do not think my
meager experience with non-recursive make warrants much more than the
link to the paper.

However, you are spot on. I did mean "has source files in more than one
directory."

You are also correct in stating that the paper describes how to have one
large makefile for several directories.

My comments where intended to convey the following basic statements:
- Recursive make can be viewed as sub-optimal due to the reason put
forth in the paper.
- Non-recursive make I found to be sub-optimal due to it being
cumbersome and fragile.
And my thus conclusion:
- make is lacking, once the project has source files in more than one
directory.


bengt

> On Tue, 2009-12-15 at 10:14 +0000, Michael Turner wrote:
> 
> On 12/15/2009, "Bengt Kleberg" <bengt.kleberg@REDACTED> wrote:
> 
> >Perhaps I am  mistaken, but I think the solution presented in the paper,
> >while being better than recursive make, is cumbersome and fragile. So I
> >would say that make is lacking, once the project leaves a single
> >directory.
> 
> What do you mean by "leaves a single directory?"  The only
> interpretation I can think of is: "has source files in more than one
> directory."  Whatever the demerits of the approach suggested, it's
> clearly not limited to single-directory builds.  It's a way to have one
> big makefile (composed of some fragments of makefiles in subdirectories)
> for something you're building in several directories.
> 
> From the beginning of the Implementation Notes:
> 
> "The most basic problem to overcome when implementing single-session
> make is to avoid flattening your directory structure, while joining the
> dependency information present in each subdirectory in a single tree."
> 
> So what did you mean by "leaves a single directory"?
> 
> -michael turner
> 
> >On Mon, 2009-12-14 at 13:07 -0500, Toby Thain wrote:
> >> On 14-Dec-09, at 5:47 AM, Michael Turner wrote:
> >>
> >> >
> >> > http://miller.emu.id.au/pmiller/books/rmch/
> >> >
> >> > Thanks for this.  I wasn't on the list when you first mentioned this
> >> > paper. I vaguely remembered just such a paper while trying to build an
> >> > Erlang release a few months ago.  It struck me as a breath of fresh
> >> > air
> >> > when I first read it over a decade ago.
> >> >
> >> > It's not so much that "make" is lacking, I think.
> >>
> >> Right, the problem isn't with 'make' per se, which the paper serves
> >> to prove.
> >>
> >> --Toby
> >>
> >> > Mainly it's that
> >> > the obvious approach (recursion) for building stuff out of a
> >> > hierarchical directory structure is not necessarily the best way if
> >> > you're using make.
> >> >
> >> > Having one big makefile seems, of course, horribly inelegant.  But
> >> > when
> >> > I've tried that approach, it always reminds me of things I'd forgotten
> >> > while using big, lumbering, recursive build systems.  Like, make is
> >> > really fast.  Compilers are pretty fast, too.  And having
> >> > everything in
> >> > one place can be nice.
> >> >
> >> > -michael turner
> >> >
> >> > On 12/14/2009, "Bengt Kleberg" <bengt.kleberg@REDACTED> wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> Greetings,
> >> >>
> >> >> It has been well over a year since last time I mentioned this paper
> >> >> "Recursive Make Considered Harmful",
> >> >> (http://miller.emu.id.au/pmiller/books/rmch/). so I hope it is ok
> >> >> that I
> >> >> do it again.
> >> >>
> >> >> Nice little reading for those that find themselves wondering if
> >> >> they are
> >> >> the only ones that think make is somewhat lacking, at times.
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> bengt
> >> >>
> >> >> On Mon, 2009-12-14 at 13:02 +0300, Sergei Golovan wrote:
> >> >>> Hi!
> >> >>>
> >> >>> I did some further investigations and found that simply calling make
> >> >>> in all doc/src
> >> >>> directories works better then trying to run make recursively.
> >> >>>
> >> >>> pwd=`pwd`
> >> >>> for i in `find . -wholename '*/doc/src'` ; do
> >> >>>     (cd $i ; make man ERL_TOP=$pwd )
> >> >>> done
> >> >>>
> >> >>> (using Erlang R12B-02-1 edoc and docbuilder, and the attached
> >> >>> docb_gen script)
> >> >>> generates manpages perfectly, make html and make pdf though
> >> >>> suffer from runtime
> >> >>> errors while running xsltproc.
> >> >>>
> >> >>> Running make recursively reveals a whole bunch of problems with
> >> >>> missing and redefined
> >> >>> 'docs' targets in makefiles.
> >> >>>
> >> >>> On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 12:16 PM,  <lars@REDACTED> wrote:
> >> >>>> Hi Sergei,
> >> >>>> we started to build our documentation with open source tools in
> >> >>>> R13B03 so it
> >> >>>> would be possible to build the doc from the delivered sources.
> >> >>>>
> >> >>>> But it's still only built in house because we hadn't time to
> >> >>>> test it but the plan is
> >> >>>> to have it work for everyone in R13B04.
> >> >>>>
> >> >>>> Thanks for your report, we'll have a look at those fault.
> >> >>>>
> >> >>>> Regards Lars
> >> >>>>
> >> >>>>
> >> >>>> Sergei Golovan wrote:
> >> >>>>> Hi!
> >> >>>>>
> >> >>>>> I'm trying to build Erlang documentation from the sources (the
> >> >>>>> goal is
> >> >>>>> to switch from prebuilt docs for Debian Erlang packages as
> >> >>>>> building
> >> >>>>> them from the source is preferable).
> >> >>>>>
> >> >>>>> To do that I run
> >> >>>>> make
> >> >>>>> make TYPE=docs
> >> >>>>> (in fact, make libs doesn't recognize TYPE, so I had to replace
> >> >>>>> "make
> >> >>>>> opt" by "make $(TYPE) in the top-level Makefile).
> >> >>>>>
> >> >>>>> and I've found several problems which make build fail:
> >> >>>>>
> >> >>>>> 1) For some XML files (e.g. erts/docs/src/book.xml) xsltproc
> >> >>>>> reports
> >> >>>>> runtime errors about undefined variables (partnum in line 871
> >> >>>>> and 963
> >> >>>>> of db_pdf.xsl, in lines 1075 and 1173 of db_html.xsl). Is this
> >> >>>>> a bug
> >> >>>>> in the stylesheets or in xsltproc? (Both 1.1.24 from Debian
> >> >>>>> stable and
> >> >>>>> 1.1.26 from Debian unstable failed.)
> >> >>>>>
> >> >>>>> 2) wx application has duplicated targets html and docs in its
> >> >>>>> makefile.
> >> >>>>>
> >> >>>>> 3) wx application (and others too) require docb_gen script to
> >> >>>>> generate
> >> >>>>> XML docs sources. It is missing. (I suppose that it is a simple
> >> >>>>> wrapper around docb_gen Erlang module and could be recreated,
> >> >>>>> but It'd
> >> >>>>> be better if it were shipped in Erlang sources.)
> >> >>>>>
> >> >>>>> Is Erlang documentation supposed to be buildable from the
> >> >>>>> source, or
> >> >>>>> it still requires some unavailable tools?
> >> >>>>>
> >> >>>>> Cheers!
> >> >>>>
> >> >>>>
> >> >>>
> >> >>>
> >> >>>
> >> >>> ________________________________________________________________
> >> >>> erlang-bugs mailing list. See http://www.erlang.org/faq.html
> >> >>> erlang-bugs (at) erlang.org
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> ________________________________________________________________
> >> >> erlang-bugs mailing list. See http://www.erlang.org/faq.html
> >> >> erlang-bugs (at) erlang.org
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >
> >> > ________________________________________________________________
> >> > erlang-bugs mailing list. See http://www.erlang.org/faq.html
> >> > erlang-bugs (at) erlang.org
> >> >
> >>
> >
> >
> >________________________________________________________________
> >erlang-bugs mailing list. See http://www.erlang.org/faq.html
> >erlang-bugs (at) erlang.org
> >
> >

More information about the erlang-bugs mailing list