666439 - autogenerate Makefile.in dependencies to enhance/replace use of allmakefiles.sh

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 784841

(Firefox Build System :: General, defect)

Description

[Joey Armstrong [:joey]]

allmakefiles.sh is another config element that might benefit from makefile generation.  If Makefile.in is added or removed in the sandbox autogeneration or removal of the allmakefiles.sh script as a build dependency would eliminate file maintenance as a potential problem source.

%make -f client.mk
creating browser/components/places/tests/browser/Makefile
creating browser/components/places/tests/perf/Makefile

can't read /mozilla/sandbox/gml/browser/components/places/tests/perf/Makefile.in: No such file or directory

creating browser/components/privatebrowsing/test/Makefile

Comment 1

[Benjamin Smedberg]

allmakefiles.sh is a performance optimization. I'm happy if we want to develop a way to autogenerate it instead of requiring that it be hand-edited whenever we add/remove a directory, but otherwise I'm not sure if it's incredibly important. People have blanket approval to make changes which match reality.

Comment 2

[Joey Armstrong [:joey]]

The contents of allmakefiles.sh will be trivial to generate using the container makefile setup.  The only question might be about format and how to access.

A shell script can be generated for existing behavior.
A raw list of paths could be generated for use by $(shell cat allmakefiles)
If only used internally by makefiles output could be formatted as a makefile to be included and avoid shell overhead.

Comment 3

[Gregory Szorc [:gps]]

I have code that uses pymake to traverse Makefile.in's and determine which Makefile's need to be generated. It is very fragile because, well, it needs to evaluate Makefile's to work. When we have variable assignment using := $(shell), it breaks horribly, for example.

Comment 4

[Joey Armstrong [:joey]]

(In reply to Gregory Szorc [:gps] from comment #3)
> I have code that uses pymake to traverse Makefile.in's and determine which
> Makefile's need to be generated. It is very fragile because, well, it needs
> to evaluate Makefile's to work. When we have variable assignment using :=
> $(shell), it breaks horribly, for example.

Can this bug be closed now since the shell makefile lists have been deprecated ?

Comment 5

[Ed Morley [:emorley]]

Agreed; made redundant by bug 784841.