Re: [PATCHv2] Makefile: implement help target

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sep 29, 2010, 15:41 UTC
Message-ID: <7vhbh8r1zj.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20100929073400.GA28010@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

Show 6 quoted lines

> What I was trying to say was more that alphabetical is not necessarily
> the most useful order to present things in the help screen. Probably
> there is some hand-selected order that presents the entries in the least
> confusing way. And one way of representing that is to have the topics in
> that order in the Makefile, which in theory probably makes reading the
> Makefile itself simpler.

I agree with this, even though I do not feel _too_ strongly about it.

By the way, while we are at adding "make help" support...

With help annotations in the Makefile like this:

        # Help: install everything
        # - the user visible commands go to $(bindir)
        # - helper programs go to $(gitexec_instdir)
        # - templates go to $(template_instdir)
        install: all
                $(INSTALL) -d -m 755 '$(DESTDIR_SQ)$(bindir_SQ)'

I imagine it would be really cool if "make help" said something like this:

    $ make help
    ...
    install:
      install everything
      - the user visible commands go to $(bindir) = /home/junio/bin
      - helper commands go to $(gitexec_instdir) = /home/junio/libexec/git-core
      - templates go to $(template_instdir) = /home/junio/share/git-core/templates

to help the builder figuring out what make variable(s) to tweak. To be useful, I think you would need to show the expansion, though. E.g.

    - the user visible commands go to $(bindir) = /home/junio/bin
        bindir = $(prefix)/$(bindir_relative)
        prefix = $HOME
        HOME = /home/junio
        bindir_relative = bin

But again, I do not feel strongly about it either.