Re: What is BSD make?

[Aleksej Saushev <asau%inbox.ru@localhost>]

christos%astron.com@localhost (Christos Zoulas) writes:

> In article <87vdvxjzof.fsf%inbox.ru@localhost>, Aleksej Saushev  
> <asau%inbox.ru@localhost> wrote:
>>Peter Bex <Peter.Bex%xs4all.nl@localhost> writes:
>>
>>GNU make does provide default suffix rules for ".c.o" and such,
>>they are just built in, hardcoded, and you can't go and simply
>>change them by means of editing text file. You can easily prove
>>it, just write "hello world" program, call it "hw.c", and type
>>"gmake hw".
>
> This is incorrect. Not only you can override the suffix rules like
> in every other make, but also gnu make also supports pattern rules
> which are a lot more general and flexible than suffix rules. This
> is the major shortcoming of pmake [or bmake - whatever you want to
> call it]. It is a few hours of code to implement pattern rules,
> and once this is done, pmake will be as flexible as gmake.

You can override them, but you can't do it globally without
rebuilding the tool or repetitive inclusion of some text in your
makefiles.

Yes, GNU make supports pattern rules, they are more general, but
their usage is mostly limited to suffix ones. I rarely see examples,
where pattern matching is really useful. Though I admit, that having
them might be good.


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