Bug#88029: allow rules file to be non-makefile

[Julian Gilbey <J.D.Gilbey@qmw.ac.uk>]

On Thu, Mar 01, 2001 at 12:42:48AM +0100, Josip Rodin wrote:
> Makefiles are already arbitrary code. You can write a makefile rules file
> that would use shoop stuff -- which would be perfectly conformant, but would
> that make it any easier to edit (for the uninitiated)?

But one is much less likely to do that: there may be the odd line of
code in shoop, but to actually warp the makefile into shoop would seem
like hard work.

> Imagine a rules file like this:
> [...]
> How is that hard to NMU? Unless of course the developer in question doesn't
> know a thing about shell scripting. :|

Very nice, but why?  What's the point of copying a standard example
makefile and turning it into a shell script?  If someone is going to
go to the effort of writing rules in a system other than make, they're
likely to want to do something a bit bizarre, and that's where things
get hairy.

   Julian

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         Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, Queen Mary, Univ. of London
       Debian GNU/Linux Developer,  see http://people.debian.org/~jdg
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