Re: [PATCH] Makefile(s): avoid recipe prefix in conditional statements

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Apr 8, 2024, 23:44 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqcyqz5sie.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <606990048585347654f3b4b187ec27f4dc1b85e3.camel@gnu.org>

Paul Smith <psmith@gnu.org> writes:

Show 8 quoted lines

> I'd love to do that as well but unfortunately there's just no way to
> get coherent behavior out of GNU Make if this TAB prefix is allowed. 
> If the original authors of GNU Make had followed the lead of the BSD
> make folks (or C) and used some reserved character to introduce
> preprocessor statements (BSD make uses ".if"/".else" etc. which would
> work) then we wouldn't be in this predicament.  But make's parser is so
> ad hoc that it's impossible to fix issues like this in a completely
> backward-compatible manner.

I wonder if you could ease the transition by leaving the current parsing rule for conditional constructs that are indented with HT and clearly mark them as "works as best-effort basis---the parsing bug for them may remain", introduce BSD compatible .if/.else and friends, and nudge the users in that direction.

Having to use two different indentation style in the same Makefile is simply a nightmare, and that might be a good enough incentive for users to move to the new "you can write with dots like .if and that way you can continue indenting with HT".