Re: dh 7 broken by design?
On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 08:35:03AM +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
> Helmut Grohne <helmut@subdivi.de> writes:
> > I only tried to fix the broken example by adding a .PHONY rule. What
> > I blame dh for is that it implements .PHONY rules without marking
> > them as such.
> I don't understand this statement. ???dh??? is a program, it doesn't
> implement *any* makefile rules. That's up to the person who writes the
> makefile (which in our context is named ???debian/rules???).
Ok, you're ranting on improper wording. It of course does not implement
rules, but (common) actions. So with the simple-dh-example-rules-file
"./debian/rules foo" will invoke "dh foo". dh implements actions for
makefile targets. These targets all do not created a target file. The
lacking "marking" applies to the example listed in man 1 dh. I'd
expected the example to include some code forcing make to rebuild the
targets even when files with the same name exist.
> I'm having trouble understanding what it is you expect to happen. What
> would the result of ???dh marking .PHONY rules as such??? actually look
> like? Should something change on the system when ???debhelper??? version 7
> or above is installed? If so, what?
The result would be changing the 3-line example in man 1 dh to a 4-line
example. However this is not possible, because either make is buggy
(#509756) or it just doesn't work.
<rant>
I don't get rid of the feeling that some people try to misunderstand me
as long as possible instead of even considering there might be bugs in
dh (I'm not saying that this is the case) while others (Joey, Russ) can
just add valuable content.
</rant>
Helmut
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