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Author Topic: God I hate makefiles  (Read 4282 times)

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God I hate makefiles
« on: September 03, 2016, 05:14:03 PM »

The dependencies on .h files are always wrong, out-of-date, untestable, and very dangerous unless you do a full build every time, which defeats half the point.

Is there a better modern alternative to make? I'm aware of various alternatives, but don't know about their safety.

Or failing that an automatic dependency builder and dependency checker for existing makefiles. Will need to be capable of being taught about new extensions, .d in my case, the D programming language (aka D2, Dlang, see http://dlang.org).  And being able to perform a parallel build is enormously valuable, a big plus, even more so in this age of multiple cores, as long as it can be done safely. I've read about parallel makes but I've never used one, I've only read about the option.

I used to use the JPI C compiler for DOS (but reconfigured for novel target systems) all the time, which came with an auto-dependency, intelligent make which didn't use makefiles, it just did the right thing automagically. The only traditional make I've ever used is Microsoft nmake, on WinNT, at the time for Win16 targets ( :-[ ) and I read that msbuild is far, far better. All my knowledge is 25 years out of date, so please be nice, I'm very ancient.
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