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

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

On Thu, Mar 01, 2001 at 02:31:57AM +0100, Josip Rodin wrote:
> > I can't think of a really good reason for insisting, besides the issue
> > of readability.
> 
> Indeed, and even that's debatable.

And not particularly precisely defined ;-)

> I can't seem to think of proper wording to allow non-makefile... perhaps
> this:
> 
>    This file must be an architecture-independent non-interactive executable
>    which has to take the following parameters on the command line and act
>    accordingly:
> 
> [list of required targets]

BTW, see the accepted proposal 72335 about build-arch/build-indep.
This means that "debian/rules [-q] build-(arch|indep)" will have to
bomb out with exit status 2 if the target does not exist.  So that
will have to go into policy as a requirement:

  If the requested target does not exist, you must exit with exit
  status 2.  If you are called with a -q flag, you must not attempt to
  perform any actions, and must return with exit status 2 if and only
  if the requested target does not exist.

This is getting messy, but still doable.

   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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