5 This list comes both from the authors and from users of GNU make.
7 They are listed in no particular order!
9 Also, I don't gaurantee that all of them will be ultimately deemed "good
10 ideas" and implemented. These are just the ones that, at first blush,
11 seem to have some merit (and that I can remember).
13 However, if you see something here you really, really want, speak up.
14 All other things being equal, I will tend to implement things that seem
15 to maximize user satisfaction.
17 If you want to implement some of them yourself, barring the ones I've
18 marked below, have at it! Please contact me first to let me know you're
19 working on it, and give me some info about the design--and, critically,
20 information about any user-visible syntax change, etc.
26 If you know perl (or want to learn DejaGNU or similar), the number one
27 priority on my list of things I don't have time to do right now is
28 fixing up the GNU make test suite. Most importantly it needs to be made
29 "parallelizable", so more than one regression can run at the same time
30 (essentially, make the "work" directory local). Also, the CWD during
31 the test should be in the work directory; right now sometimes tests leak
32 files into the main directory which causes subsequent tests to fail
33 (some tests may need to be tweaked). Beyond that, any cleanup done to
34 make writing, reading, or handling tests simpler would be great! Please
35 feel free to make whatever changes you like to the current tests, given
36 some high-level goals, and that you'll port the current tests to
39 If someone does this work I'll be able to start including the test suite
40 with make itself, which would be very cool.
46 1) Allow variables/functions to expand to other make rules which are
47 then interpreted, with newlines handled correctly. This is a
48 biggee, and is on my plate. I already have partially-working code.
50 2) Option to check more than timestamps to determine if targets have
51 changed. This is also a very big one. It's _close_ to my plate :),
52 and I have very definite ideas about how I want it done. Please
53 pick something else unless you must have this feature. If you try
54 it, please work _extremely_ closely with me on it.
56 2a) Possibly a special case of this is the .KEEP_STATE feature of Sun's
57 make. Some great folks at W U. in Canada did an implementation of
58 this for a class project. Their approach is reasonable and
59 workable, but doesn't really fit into my ideas for #2. Maybe
60 that's OK. I have paperwork for their work so if you want to do
61 this one talk to me to get what they've already done.
63 3) Currently you can use "%.foo %.bar : %.baz" to mean that one
64 invocation of the rule builds both targets. GNU make needs a way to
65 do that for explicit rules, too. I heard a rumor that some versions
66 of make all you to say "a.foo + a.bar : a.baz" to do this (i.e., a
67 "+" means one invocation builds both). Don't know if this is the
68 best syntax or not... what if you say "a.foo + a.bar a.bam : a.baz";
71 4) Multi-token pattern rule matching (allow %1/%2.c : %1/obj/%2.o,
72 etc., or something like that). I have an implementation of this
73 already, it just needs some refinement... maybe. Additionally I
74 think it only works for static pattern rules; it might need to be
75 fixed up to work with normal pattern rules, too.
77 5) More robust clock skew detection algorithm: less false hits. I have
78 some notes on this from various discussions.
80 6) Provide MAKETARGETS and MAKEVARIABLES variables, containing the
81 names of the targets and variables defined in the makefile.
83 Actually, I now think a $(targets ...) function, at least, would be
84 better than a MAKETARGETS variable. The argument would be types of
85 targets to list: "phony" is the most useful one. I suppose
86 "default" might also be useful. Maybe some others; check the
87 bitfields to see what might be handy. This one is pretty easy.
89 7) Some sort of operating-system independent way of handling paths
90 would be outstanding, so makefiles can be written for UNIX, VMS,
91 DOS, MS-Windows, Amiga, etc. with a minimum of specialization.
93 Or, perhaps related/instead of, some sort of meta-quoting syntax so
94 make can deal with filenames containing spaces, colons, etc. I
95 dunno, maybe something like $[...]? This may well not be worth
96 doing until #1 is done.
98 9) Right now the .PRECIOUS, .INTERMEDIATE, and .SECONDARY
99 psuedo-targets have different capabilities. For example, .PRECIOUS
100 can take a "%", the others can't. Etc. These should all work the
101 same, insofar as that makes sense.
103 10) A syntax that specifies a build order _without_ implying a
104 dependency relationship. That is, a way to say "A must be built
105 before B" that doesn't force B to be built when A changes. This is
106 very important for parallel builds: sometimes you need some stuff
107 done first but you don't want to rebuild everything because of it.
109 11) Improved debugging/logging/etc. capabilities. This area is in
110 desparate need of work; the current -d, -s, etc. options are simply
111 insufficient. We need different levels of output: some that are
112 much less verbose. E.g., maybe just print one line about why make
113 decides to rebuild each target. Also, we could use something like
114 the -E option for preprocessors; this would print out makefiles
115 after resolving all includes, immediate variable reverences, etc.
116 Also, a way to turn on and off obeying the "@" token for scripts
117 that's independent of -n (so we could have them in effect for -n,
118 and have them not in effect without -n).
120 Maybe other things. Contact me about the user interface.