4 ms·

I don't see why there couldn't be (even today!) some statement like "require version XYZ", which Make could notice, which would enable new features and nicer sy

I don't see why there couldn't be (even today!) some statement like "require version XYZ", which Make could notice, which would enable new features and nicer syntax. Something like "editions" in Rust, though the idea is much older. For some reason, people prefer to add more layers on top of Make rather than improving the core language and tool. Maybe there's some good reason?

m463 3y ago
I think people treat make like a dmv trip or taxes. They want to get in, get it done, and get out. But who wants to improve the DMV?
matheusmoreira 3y ago
> rather than improving the core language and tool GNU Make has been steadily gaining new functions though. I've been reading the manual again recently and there were a few functions I did not recognize: let and intcmp. The new integer comparison function is particularly notable since people have gone to some rather incredible lengths to implement arithmetic in make: https://gmsl.jgc.org https://gmsl.jgc.org It's also possible to write native plugins for GNU Make to load at runtime. New functions can be implemented this way. It works just like C extensions for other scripting languages. There's also Guile extension support but unfortunately it doesn't seem to allow new function definitions.
- dmd 3y ago
  > arithmetic in make Well that’s horrifying. What is the use case? Or is it just hackers gonna hack?
  - nrclark 3y ago
    Incrementing a counter would be one example. Like maybe you want to produce file-00.txt through file-99.txt.
  - Brian_K_White 3y ago
    idk about anyone else but I have auto incrementing build numbers in several makefiles That would seem to be the most obvious and trivial example and I just assume that there must be countless others without having to actually see them and agree that they are valid. Wait, how could I forget the other most obvious example, comparing version numbers of requirements/dependencies? The Vala preprocessor can't compare numbers and so I have to implement "if libfoo < x then add -D OLDFOO" outside in the makefile and can only have boolean #if OLDFOO in the code. (libs don't always provide good enough equivalents, maybe only provides a numerical value that you are assumed to be able to compare, or maybe provides nothing at all, or does provide a set of booleans intended to be used for this but they aren't granular enough, etc)

m463 3y ago

I think people treat make like a dmv trip or taxes. They want to get in, get it done, and get out. But who wants to improve the DMV?

matheusmoreira 3y ago

> rather than improving the core language and tool GNU Make has been steadily gaining new functions though. I've been reading the manual again recently and there were a few functions I did not recognize: let and intcmp. The new integer comparison function is particularly notable since people have gone to some rather incredible lengths to implement arithmetic in make: https://gmsl.jgc.org https://gmsl.jgc.org It's also possible to write native plugins for GNU Make to load at runtime. New functions can be implemented this way. It works just like C extensions for other scripting languages. There's also Guile extension support but unfortunately it doesn't seem to allow new function definitions.

dmd 3y ago
> arithmetic in make Well that’s horrifying. What is the use case? Or is it just hackers gonna hack?
- nrclark 3y ago
  Incrementing a counter would be one example. Like maybe you want to produce file-00.txt through file-99.txt.
- Brian_K_White 3y ago
  idk about anyone else but I have auto incrementing build numbers in several makefiles That would seem to be the most obvious and trivial example and I just assume that there must be countless others without having to actually see them and agree that they are valid. Wait, how could I forget the other most obvious example, comparing version numbers of requirements/dependencies? The Vala preprocessor can't compare numbers and so I have to implement "if libfoo < x then add -D OLDFOO" outside in the makefile and can only have boolean #if OLDFOO in the code. (libs don't always provide good enough equivalents, maybe only provides a numerical value that you are assumed to be able to compare, or maybe provides nothing at all, or does provide a set of booleans intended to be used for this but they aren't granular enough, etc)