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I've already configured my editors and tools to work with Make, and I'm not so much complaining about Make here as I am pointing out one of its most annoying wa
by nneonneo 10y ago
I've already configured my editors and tools to work with Make, and I'm not so much complaining about Make here as I am pointing out one of its most annoying warts. I am a pretty heavy Make user and I think it's great (not least of which because it's so darn ubiquitous).
And, not to sound harsh, but if you always "accept that there is a reason some things work in certain ways" without questioning if there may be a better way, well, you will always be stuck with the status quo!
- pawadu 10y agoGiven the downvotes I assume this is a very touchy subject to some people here... Anyway, are you saying that accepting a tools established input format is to go with the status quo? I am all for breaking new grounds, but is this one really a priority?
- JdeBP 10y agoFor a lot of people for a long time, yes. People were complaining about the syntax based upon specific types and amounts of whitespace in the 1980s. Now note from the rest of the very discussion here in front of us that people took action on this almost twenty years ago. And that's just Johnny-come-lately GNU make. Microsoft nmake accepted either spaces or tab characters pretty much a decade before that. And there were plenty of others, from Borland's to multiple shareware versions. Even I got in on the act with my own private reimplementation of make. Somewhere around 1990, if memory serves.
- Millennium 10y agoThis is true, but it's important not to lose sight of the difference between "questioning if there may be a better way" and bikeshedding. The former is often useful; the latter usually isn't.