[erlang-questions] Rebar dependency recursion

[Tim Watson]

On 1 Nov 2012, at 21:50, Tuncer Ayaz <tuncer.ayaz@REDACTED> wrote:

>> 
> 
> So your idea is that commands should explicitly announce if they want
> to be used recursively and otherwise ignore non-base_dir applications
> with -r meaning "force all commands to process deps/sub_dirs", right?
> How would you handle the case that compile is happy to process
> sub_dirs/deps but you want to compile just base_dir?

I think we need to go back to 'it just works' in that instance. Compile wants to recurse because headers in sub dirs might have changed and dependency checking and compiling based on need/dependency is 'the right thing to do' always.

My thought was that some actions have to take place recursively on order to be correctly applied, and it's no good letting people override them. For something like test runs, doc building, xref, and so on, it can and should be optional. But compile/resolve shouldn't be. Adding that API to core would mean that internal and plugin modules get a means to enforce the right behaviour.