Re: [PATCH v2 0/7] gitweb: fix "make" not including "gitweb" without NOOP run slowdowns

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jun 23, 2022, 23:25 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq7d57x8qo.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <220623.865ykrll0j.gmgdl@evledraar.gmail.com>

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com> writes:

Show 8 quoted lines

>> We could easily add "cd .. && make gitweb" to gitweb/Makefile with
>> the same "minor hassle" but that needs to be done just once, instead
>> of having to be done once per packager, so I am not sure the above
>> argues for a good tradeoff.
>
> True, but I think critically in this case we've never documented that
> you should be running gitweb/Makefile directly. I.e. the gitweb/INSTALL
> has always documented and assumed that you run these from the top-level.

Well, I do not think Makefiles document much of their targets in general. If its first/default target has a reasonable name, like "all", people expect "cd there && make all" would do the right thing.

So I do not think "we never documented" is a good excuse. What the current users have been doing and are expecting to keep working is what counts. If they are used to see "cd gitweb && make" working, perhaps instead of giving an unfriendly $(error do not run) at the beginning of gitweb/Makefile that is designed to trigger only when they did that (instead of running 'make gitweb' from the top), it would be trivial to have the rule to "cd .. && $(MAKE) gitweb" there, no?