Re: [PATCH v2 4/5] Makefile: add the ".DELETE_ON_ERROR" flag

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Mar 31, 2021, 18:36 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq35wb891a.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <YGQdpkHAcFR/zNOx@coredump.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

> I don't know how paranoid we want to be about this, especially the
> latter. My general inclination is to prefer "commit" systems as more
> robust, but it is just a Makefile.

;-)

As an old timer, I've written "gen >$@+ && mv $@+ $@" all the time myself, but it is ugly and felt a bit too conservative. I do not think it is wise to overnight remove all the existing "generate in temporary, move to the final" patterns and delegate $(MAKE) to take care of failed generator with this mechanism, but I actually would feel it probably gives us a cleaner Makefile in the longer term. At least "bugs in $(MAKE)" won't be our sole problem (i.e. all other projects that rely on the feature would share the incentives to see them fixed).