Jouke, Wed, 20 May 2020 13:42:11 -0400, Paul Smith wrote: > > Another option would be to introduce some new syntax like $(()), > > but that might break existing Makefiles and would probably be more > > work, though it looks cleaner IMO.
> No, I don't agree with that. Trying to change the base make parser > like that would be a major source of issues. > There is already a simple way to hook in a new make function, and any > new capabilities need to fit within the current function invocation > model rather than creating brand-new top-level syntax. I took that to mean that Paul prefers just adding single math functions. Mon, 9 Dec 2024 10:37:14 +0100, Jouke Witteveen wrote: > What I remember from the original thread is that we first needed a > good proposal. I'm afraid the existence of the implementation > suggested now sidesteps the discussion on what functionality is > actually desirable. Yeah I'm totally open to discussing a proposal further. I just felt like having some working prototype implemented would be useful. On Mon, Dec 9, 2024 at 1:37 AM Jouke Witteveen <j.wittev...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Mon, Dec 9, 2024 at 12:11 AM Paul Smith <psm...@gnu.org> wrote: > > I reviewed the previous (lengthy) email thread before looking at this > > patch. > > I guess you mean the thread that at some point was titled "math > expressions" [1]. > Was there any conclusion there? At some point it gravitated to a > shell/Posix-style expr [2] function. There were issues with most, if > not all, proposals and personally I still think arithmetic operators > may be too much feature creep altogether. So far, much of GNU Make's > functionality could be summarized as a fancy rewriting language that > produces commands to be run. The compare function introduced around > the same time as the previous thread is already challenging this > viewpoint, but it could still be considered an enhanced conditional > operator. These newly proposed functions really add "numbers" as a > supported interpretation of variable values (Bash has the same). > Doesn't GNU Make already have Guile integration for cases where you > want not just a rewriting engine? I know that Make is already Turing > complete, so this argument doesn't hold in the theoretical sense, but > still I can imagine more non-idiomatic uses of arithmetic operators > than idiomatic ones. > > > I don't see the advantage in creating this special case. If someone > > wants the negation of a value, wouldn't they just write "-$V" instead > > of "$(sub $V)"? > > This feels similar to many concerns raised in the original thread four > years ago. In this particular case, "-$V" could result in two > consecutive minus signs, which is probably not what we want. > > What I remember from the original thread is that we first needed a > good proposal. I'm afraid the existence of the implementation > suggested now sidesteps the discussion on what functionality is > actually desirable. > > Regards, > - Jouke > > [1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-make/2020-05/msg00070.html > [2] https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/utilities/expr.html
