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source: kBuild/vendor/gnumake/3.82-cvs/TODO.private

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1 -*-Indented-Text-*-
2GNU Make TODO List
3------------------
4
5This list comes both from the authors and from users of GNU make.
6
7They are listed in no particular order!
8
9Also, I don't gaurantee that all of them will be ultimately deemed "good
10ideas" and implemented. These are just the ones that, at first blush,
11seem to have some merit (and that I can remember).
12
13However, if you see something here you really, really want, speak up.
14All other things being equal, I will tend to implement things that seem
15to maximize user satisfaction.
16
17If you want to implement some of them yourself, barring the ones I've
18marked below, have at it! Please contact me first to let me know you're
19working on it, and give me some info about the design--and, critically,
20information about any user-visible syntax change, etc.
21
22
23The Top Item
24------------
25
26If you know perl (or want to learn DejaGNU or similar), the number one
27priority on my list of things I don't have time to do right now is
28fixing up the GNU make test suite. Most importantly it needs to be made
29"parallelizable", so more than one regression can run at the same time
30(essentially, make the "work" directory local). Also, the CWD during
31the test should be in the work directory or, better, a test-specific
32temporary directory so each test gets a new directory; right now
33sometimes tests leak files into the main directory which causes
34subsequent tests to fail (some tests may need to be tweaked). Beyond
35that, any cleanup done to make writing, reading, or handling tests
36simpler would be great! Please feel free to make whatever changes you
37like to the current tests, given some high-level goals, and that you'll
38port the current tests to whatever you do :).
39
40
41The Rest of the List
42--------------------
43
44 1) Option to check more than timestamps to determine if targets have
45 changed. This is also a very big one. It's _close_ to my plate :),
46 and I have very definite ideas about how I would like it done.
47 Please pick something else unless you must have this feature. If
48 you try it, please work _extremely_ closely with me on it.
49
50 1a) Possibly a special case of this is the .KEEP_STATE feature of Sun's
51 make. Some great folks at W U. in Canada did an implementation of
52 this for a class project. Their approach is reasonable and
53 workable, but doesn't really fit into my ideas for #2. Maybe
54 that's OK. I have paperwork for their work so if you want to do
55 this one talk to me to get what they've already done.
56
57 [K R Praveen <praveen@cair.res.in>]
58
59 2) Currently you can use "%.foo %.bar : %.baz" to mean that one
60 invocation of the rule builds both targets. GNU make needs a way to
61 do that for explicit rules, too. I heard a rumor that some versions
62 of make all you to say "a.foo + a.bar : a.baz" to do this (i.e., a
63 "+" means one invocation builds both). Don't know if this is the
64 best syntax or not... what if you say "a.foo + a.bar a.bam : a.baz";
65 what does that mean?
66
67 3) Multi-token pattern rule matching (allow %1/%2.c : %1/obj/%2.o,
68 etc., or something like that). Maybe using regex?
69
70 4) Provide a .TARGETS variable, containing the names of the targets
71 defined in the makefile.
72
73 Actually, I now think a $(targets ...) function, at least, might be
74 better than a MAKETARGETS variable. The argument would be types of
75 targets to list: "phony" is the most useful one. I suppose
76 "default" might also be useful. Maybe some others; check the
77 bitfields to see what might be handy.
78
79 5) Some sort of operating-system independent way of handling paths
80 would be outstanding, so makefiles can be written for UNIX, VMS,
81 DOS, MS-Windows, Amiga, etc. with a minimum of specialization.
82
83 Or, perhaps related/instead of, some sort of meta-quoting syntax so
84 make can deal with filenames containing spaces, colons, etc. I
85 dunno, maybe something like $[...]? This may well not be worth
86 doing until #1 is done.
87
88 6) Right now the .PRECIOUS, .INTERMEDIATE, and .SECONDARY
89 pseudo-targets have different capabilities. For example, .PRECIOUS
90 can take a "%", the others can't. Etc. These should all work the
91 same, insofar as that makes sense.
92
93 7) Improved debugging/logging/etc. capabilities. Part of this is done:
94 I introduced a number of debugging enhancements. Tim Magill is (I
95 think) looking into options to control output more selectively.
96 One thing I want to do in debugging is add a flag to allow debugging
97 of variables as they're expanded (!). This would be incredibly
98 verbose, but could be invaluable when nothing else seems to work and
99 you just can't figure it out. The way variables are expanded now
100 means this isn't 100% trivial, but it probably won't be hard.
101
102 8) Integration of Guile as an embedded scripting language. This means:
103 allowing Guile functions to be declared in makefiles somehow, then
104 providing a syntax for invoking them. At least one formulation of
105 that would have the function resolve to a string which would be
106 substituted in the makefile, kind of like $(shell ...) does now, but
107 using the embedded interpreter so there's no process forked of
108 course. Obviously this is an optional add-on feature.
109
110 It could be more advanced than that, even, who knows? Maybe make
111 could provide Guile functions that allow Guile scripts more direct
112 access to internal make structures, somehow. This kind of thing
113 needs a lot of thought.
114
115 Also there's always the flip side: in some very fundamental ways
116 make isn't the best choice right now for a complex build tool. It's
117 great for simple-to-medium tasks, but there are already other tools
118 available for the really tough situations. Ask yourself,
119 realistically, how much work is worthwhile to add to make, given the
120 fundamentals you can't really overcome without significantly
121 affecting backward compatibility--and then why not use another tool
122 in the first place?
123
124 Something to think about.
125
126
127
128-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
129Copyright (C) 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006,
1302007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
131This file is part of GNU Make.
132
133GNU Make is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the
134terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
135Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later
136version.
137
138GNU Make is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
139WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR
140A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
141
142You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with
143this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
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