Hi Paul,
> > It seems a design flaw that I must
> >
> > make -sj clean && make -sj all && make -sj check &&
> > make -sj install
>
> Well, that's because you're only considering this use-case,
Yes, but it's an idiomatic one, oft suggested; "Unpack and run
`./configure && make all check install'".
> But, if you consider something like:
>
> make prog1 prog2 prog3 prog4
>
> then it's clearly a design flaw if these programs are built serially.
Oh sure, I wasn't trying to suggest that it's never wanted, just that
the binary -j doesn't seem sufficient to cover common cases.
> There is no easy way to do this in GNU make today.
>
> You can play some tricks with MAKECMDGOALS; something like this:
>
> all: $(filter clean,$(MAKECMDGOALS))
>
> clean::
>
> check:: $(filter all,$(MAKECMDGOALS))
>
> install:: $(filter check,$(MAKECMDGOALS))
That doesn't work for a few reasons. It needs to be more noisy to avoid
--warn's `undefined'; something like the untested
all: $(filter clean,$(if $(filter undefined,$(origin
MAKECMDGOALS)),,$(MAKECMDGOALS)))
Double-colon targets are treated as independent for the same target, so
I have to stick that dependency on every `check::', I can't just do it
once to have it affect all of them; more noise.
And it's based on this particular use-case. ;-) If a previous build
went well then `make -j install clean all check' to get me going again
will re-order to `clean all check install'. (I often find tests on
MAKECMDGOALS fail to consider order.)
The `make -j clean .WAIT all .WAIT check .WAIT install' of other makes
is no better; who wants to type that? It would seem a -J that's just
like -j except for the MAKECMDGOALS targets is nicest for the user for
this common case. Perhaps `--' is a less noisy .WAIT, though still not
great.
A pseudo-target could allow targets that cannot be built in parallel to
be specified, `.SEQUENTIAL: all clean check install', though that may be
too coarse-grained in that sometimes they can be built in parallel with
some others, just not all others. But it would allow shipped makefiles
to work with a user's -j without them having to know to switch to -J.
I think an all-encompassing solution needs thought, but a -J seems
useful. What do you think?
Cheers, Ralph.
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