Re: Why setting $contents when catching a rule?

[Tom Tromey]

>>>>> "Akim" == Akim Demaille <address@hidden> writes:

Akim> I don't understand the following line in automake.in.  It seems
Akim> very wrong to me, but...

Akim> =====> ???? $contents{$1} = 1;

This is very, very old code.  Sometimes it is fun to use `cvs
annotate' to see how old:

1.105        (tromey   27-Nov-95):          $contents{$1} = 1;

That is, this line is part of the original Perl reimplementation
(before this automake was written in sh).

Funnily enough there are still a few lines left from the sh
implementation -- the GPL comments at the top.  Some of them are even
listed as being committed by `djm' (I got his RCS ,v file when I
started hacking the sh automake).


In the olden days automake really only had variables, not targets.
Actually, targets were stored in $contents{} as well.

We might be able to simply delete this line.  I doubt anything still
depends on it.  On the other hand, I'm not positive what effect that
might have.


Some other ancient code is the definition of $(SOURCES) and $(OBJECTS)
in &generate_makefile.  That code can probably be deleted too, though,
again, it is difficult to be certain.

Tom