On Wed, Oct 22, 2003 at 01:37:36AM +0200, Josip Rodin wrote: > On Tue, Oct 21, 2003 at 05:03:53PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote: > > >> If you do not stick to the documented interfaces, you lose the > > >> ability in my eyes to express outrage when the interfaces you use > > >> change. > > > > > Except one important difference -- in this case, NOTHING CHANGES in > > > the interface if the policy proposal is accepted. > > > > We just disallow some usage that has been explicitley stated > > to work. > > No. How did you come to that conclusion? > > This is another time you're giving the impression of "don't take away my > makefile rules files!". Well, maybe there's some Grinch out there who wants > to steal them away from you, but I assure you that my intentions are not to > do that. :) I don't Manoj is accusing you of trying to force him to make his rules files not be Makefiles. He's accusing you of trying to let other people make *their* rules files non-Makefiles, which is objectionable to him, because he likes to play with MAKEFLAGS and VPATH. I disagree with him, however, since Policy does not forbid, even implicitly, a developer from "sabotaging" the values of these variables in the rules file. In my opinion, Manoj's rationale for not tolerating alternative implementations of make is not grounded on any documented interface, but rather his knowledge of what's going on *behind* the interface. Good programmers know not to take such things for granted. Unless Manoj can come up with a different argument that I find persuasive, I would continue to support a proposal to loosen the definition of a debian/rules file in this respect. -- G. Branden Robinson | Lowery's Law: Debian GNU/Linux | If it jams -- force it. If it branden@debian.org | breaks, it needed replacing anyway. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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