[perl #36647] 'make languages' should continue after building a language failed

[Bernhard Schmalhofer]

# New Ticket Created by Bernhard Schmalhofer
# Please include the string: [perl #36647]
# in the subject line of all future correspondence about this issue.
# <URL: https://rt.perl.org/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=36647 >

'make languages' or 'cd languages && make' is a shortcut for building
most language implementations
in 'languages'.
When the building one language, e.g. m4, fails, then it is sane that the
remaining languages are still being built.

[Jerry Gay via RT]

leo's fix (r8695) works just fine on windows :)

but what is all this .dummy business?

tcl: tcl.dummy
tcl.dummy:
- $(MAKE_C) tcl
tcl.test:
- $(MAKE_C) tcl test
tcl.clean:
- $(MAKE_C) tcl clean

can't that just be
tcl:
- $(MAKE_C) tcl
etc.

~jerry

[Will Coleda]

This is because there's a directory called "tcl". Since the directly
already exists, there'd be nothing to make.

Picking a dummy target like this is a way to force the target to
always be built, regardless.

[Matt Fowles]

Will~

Doesn't make have something called "PHONY" to handle that exact case?

Matt

--
"Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory."
-Stan Kelly-Bootle, The Devil's DP Dictionary

[Will Coleda]

I believe that .PHONY is a gnu-make ism, and for now, we at least
have to support nmake, and Solaris's /usr/ccs/bin/make, etc.

According to

http://www.bell-labs.com/project/nmake/faq/gmake.html

nmake has something similar called .VIRTUAL - someone could abstract
out the makefile-specifics of this, and have the various
makefile.in's automatically generate the best code for the particular
make you're using.

One of the original goals was to replace make with something driven
by miniparrot - If that's still a goal, our energy is probably better
spent doing that than customizing the generated makefiles.

At the moment, however, I'm of the mind: if it ain't broke, don't fix
it.

Regards.

[Leopold Toetsch]

On Jul 27, 2005, at 16:00, Jerry Gay via RT wrote:

>
> leo's fix (r8695) works just fine on windows :)

IIRC bernhard's and ...

> but what is all this .dummy business?

that is a thing I thought too several times.

leo

[Jonathan Worthington]

Now we know, it'd probably be a Good Thing if the makefiles actually had a
comment in that explained this to anyone else who wonders. Complain now if
you disagree, otherwise it'll be done tomorrow evening. :-)

Jonathan