"David T. Lewis" <lewis at mail.msen.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 16, 2001 at 09:30:32PM -0800, Tim Rowledge wrote:
> > 
> > I always had this vague idea that VMMaker ought to be able to assemble
> > the makefile (or at least the core part of it) since clearly we know
> > which files we are putting where etc. Does anyone have any good
> > suggestions for implementation?
> 
> I started some work a while back on a "make" for Squeak, to go along
> with VMMaker. It's been on the back burner due to lack of time.
> 

make is really annoying.  In most systems, including Squeak/Unix, it
doesn't do its main job -- you type "make" and you really don't know if
the right things got compiled.  So...


I fixed up Squeak to use Jam once upon a time.  I did moderately well at
getting the dependencies right, so if you typed "jam" after editting any
file, the right things would get rebuilt.

Nowadays there's a group at Georgia Tech putting together a Scheme-based
make replacement.  I've written Squeak build rules for this system, too,
but I haven't released it since they haven't released their thing!

Also, an issue to consider is that Ian Piumarta is very happy with
autoconf and make.  This is part of the reason the Jamfiles didn't catch
on.


BTW, programming a better make is harder than it sounds.  Several people
have spent a few months on it and then moved on.  Thus Jam, build,
aegis, cook, cons, and on and on....  It's easy to improve on make, but
it's hard to really nail the problem.


-Lex