Make replacement for Erlang - suggestions?

[Luke Gorrie]

Bengt Kleberg <eleberg@REDACTED> writes:

> > From: Per Bergqvist <per@REDACTED>                                
> 
> > In most projects I been involded in we have used gmake and stayed with
> > it.                                                                   
> >                          
> > For make replacement I simply ask why ? You can use gmake on every    
> > useable platform on earth, and even windows with cygwin ...           
> 
> i find http://aegis.sourceforge.net/auug97.pdf a good way of opening
> peoples eyes to the fallacy of using (g)make.

I read that paper (Recursive Make Considered Harmful) a ways back and
it didn't make much of an impression. But then I was recently playing
with Ghostscript, which uses non-recursive makefiles (i.e. a
"monolithic" Makefile, modularized with includes), and it's pretty
nice. If you "make" when things are already up-to-date, it just
returns very quickly, rather than taking several seconds and
outputting hundreds of lines like "Entering <subdir>.."

I tried the same approach on my last program that needed makefiles,
and though it performs nicely, I did find it a bugger to code. There
appear to be some tricks, but they don't seem very widely known.

A friend also "ported" a Makefile for a java program of mine into
Ant's XML format, incase anyone's curious you can see the before and
after:

  http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/echidna/echidna/Makefile?rev=1.7&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup

  http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/echidna/echidna/build.xml?rev=1.4&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup

I'll just say that the XML version is larger (at least in part)
because it is also generating documentation, and let you draw your
own conclusions.

Cheers,
Luke