Re: Let construct

[Jouke Witteveen]

Hi Pete,

A month ago, I got in touch with Paul Smith about some paperwork
needed for assigning copyright to the FSF. I did not hear back from
him since and assume he is busy with other things at the moment. Since
Make is quite old, I figured there is no rush.

Probably the most important thing for the let proposal will be to have
good documentation. It should explain the behavior in a clear and
concise way, with some examples, but maybe also give some more
technical background: How it relates to lexical scoping (and how this
can be tricky in the case of Make because expressions may not be
evaluated at the moment a newcomer expects them to be), how it relates
to `let` in other languages, and probably also how it relates to the
Posix `read` shell command.

Since this is at least as tricky to get right as the actual code, I
chose to postpone it to after getting the green light for the feature.
In other words: I have not written anything yet, so if you feel
adventurous, you could draft something. It is often easier to
criticize an existing text than to make a new one.

Regards,
- Jouke

On Fri, May 1, 2020 at 3:43 PM Pete Dietl <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> Hey there.
> I just wanted to touch base about the status of the proposal of a (let) 
> construct. I think it’ll be a very useful feature and want to see it make 
> progress. :) I’m willing to help with it if need be.