On Sun, Apr 28, 2013 at 8:50 PM, Marko Kreen <mark...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 12:10:44AM +0100, Gavin Smith wrote: >> In the long run I'd like to see creating and running a build system to be >> as simple as doing something like >> >> $ echo >Makefile.am <<END >> bin_PROGRAMS = hello >> hello_SOURCES = hello.c beetroot.h rhubarb.h second.c >> END >> $ automake >> $ make > > Alternative way of simplification that is working well > for my own projects is "Makefile.am is Makefile": > > $ wget https://raw.github.com/libusual/antimake/master/antimake.mk > $ cat > Makefile <<EOF > bin_PROGRAMS = hello > hello_SOURCES = hello.c > include antimake.mk > EOF > $ echo 'int main() { return 0; }' > hello.c > $ make > > Note - autoconf integration is available, but optional. So above > sequence is really all that is needed to build. I like this approach. I actually thought about making a build system where the equivalent of Makefile.am would be a fragment which would be included in a larger makefile, until I realised that the syntax I would use would be similar to that already used in Makefile.am, so I might as well base my work on automake. The automake syntax is mostly make syntax which makes what you've done possible. I would definitely have had a look at antimake had I known about it a couple of months ago.
antimake and automake-ng (fork of automake targeting GNU make only) require GNU make. The changes I've made also introduce a few potential incompatibilities with make's other than GNU make, but I'm hopeful that these will be minor and we can perhaps even generate Makefiles for other makes as well. I think the idea of generation of portable build systems using portable make and portable shell is sound, even though it does make things more difficult.
