Looking for speed increases in "make index" and pkg_version for ports

[Rick C. Petty]

On Sun, May 27, 2007 at 03:30:48PM -0700, Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
> 
> That said, I'll ask this out in the open: am I the only one who sees the
> benefit of GNU make in regards to this?  There's a lot of built-in
> functions in GNU make which could help in regards to ports.  I have no
> qualms with PMake per se, but if another tool gives us what we need,
> then maybe we should consider the pros and cons of adapting that.
> There's also CMake, which is incredibly fast.

Yes, you are.  What gmake benefits?

Gmake does not provide the flexibility and power that pmake provides.  Off
the top of my head:  gmake does not have ".for" loops, variable expansion
modifiers, or even the "!=" shell command variable assigment.  I use these
in almost every Makefile I write, and the ports uses these things quite a
bit.  Also, gmake syntax is horrendous compared to pmake.  People are
already complaining about how ugly the ports makefiles are-- they'd be
worse under gmake.  Might as well rewrite the whole infrastructure in
/bin/sh ...

Also, there's the licensing issues.  Remember-- any significant changes to
this infrastructure has to work with the core utilities..  this leaves out
gmake, python, ruby, etc.  I doubt anyone will find anything as powerful
as pmake without sacrificing the much-used flexibility it provides.

-- Rick C. Petty