Re: Running a plain ./config.status at top level

[Eric Siegerman]

On Sun, May 11, 2003 at 05:20:10PM -0500, Raja R Harinath wrote:
> Alexandre Duret-Lutz <address@hidden> writes:
> >>>> "Eric" == Eric Siegerman <address@hidden> writes:
> >  Eric> [suggests using "::" Makefile rules]
> >
> > This sounds really attractive, but I'm more concerned because
> > ::-rules are not POSIX.
>
> The Unix V7 make manual mentions double-colon rules.  Here's an
> excerpt for the troff source (manually formatted):
>
>   A dependency line may have either a single or a double colon.
>   [remainder snipped]

Indeed.  The passage you quote comes verbatim from Feldman's
original paper [1].  So ::-rules were in the primordial "make".
Thanks for the support :-)

Unfortunately, it turns out Alexandre's correct; POSIX does *not*
require support for ::-rules.  Their version's "Rationale"
section [2] says:
> The double colon in the target rule format is supported in BSD
> systems to allow more than one target line containing the same
> target name to have commands associated with it. Since this is
> not functionality described in the SVID or XPG3 it has been
> allowed as an extension, but not mandated.

So SysV and XPG3 both *dropped* support for ::-rules.  Then POSIX
didn't look far enough back into history, and so assumed it was a
BSD-ism.  *sigh*


> > Does someone know a Make implementation
> > that doesn't support them?

Never heard of one, but then I'm hardly an authority :-/

What does all of this means for Automake?  Beats me...

On second thought, maybe AM should just go ahead and use the
feature, and we should all lobby for it to be reinstated in the
next version of POSIX, citing (a) history, i.e. dropping it in
the first place seems to have been an error, and (b) look at all
those Automake-based packages that need it!  (Only about 1/3
joking...)


[1] 
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/rd/46753275%2C258031%2C1%2C0.25%2CDownload/http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/cache/papers/cs/11420/http:zSzzSzwww.rnl.ist.utl.ptzSz%7EprszSzunixzSzmake.pdf/feldman79make.pdf
[2] http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007904975/utilities/make.html

--

|  | /\
|-_|/  >   Eric Siegerman, Toronto, Ont.        address@hidden
|  |  /
My Wine works.  However it crashes about half the time on startup.
Apparently their simulation of windoze API is getting too accurate.  :)
        - Kyle Sallee