make -- generate missing include files

[Robert Clausecker <fuz%fuz.su@localhost>]

Greetings!

I'm the maintainer of schilytools, a collection of programs
with a very peculiar homegrown build system:

    https://codeberg.org/schilytools/schilytools

Schilytools ships with its own make implementation (smake) but has
support for building with other makes.  Unfortunately bmake is not
supported.  Before the main author Jörg Schilling died, he was working
on bmake support but eventually concluded that it is not possible.
This is because the build system makes intensive use of a feature of
other makes where if an include file is not found, make stops parsing
the makefile at this point, tries to build the include file and if
that succeeds, continues parsing with the newly generated file.  Rinse
and repeat until all include files have been generated.

This feature is vital to the way the build system works.  For example,
it is used to run a configure script generating further makefile
fragments or to generate missing symbolic links.

Unfortunately it seems bmake does not support this.  In prior
communication with Simon Gerraty (bmake maintainer), it was suggested
to me that I should ask on this list if there is any interest in such a
feature for NetBSD make/bmake.  This would permit building schilytools
and possibly other projects with the native make instead of having to
build a bootstrap smake or gmake.

What do you think?

Yours,
Robert Clausecker

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