On Feb 20, 2009, at 7:56 AM, Krzysztof Kosiński wrote:

What is the purpose of using Makefile_insert to pretend that everything is in

the src directory instead of using the SUBDIRS directive?


I'm intending to change the Automake build system to link the executables

from single object files instead of static libraries so that we may finally

put files in the proper directories (e.g. remove widgets/ and dialogs/ and

move those to ui/widget and ui/dialog/, as well as join helper/, util/ and

svg/), and I would like to know whether I should also sanitize general

Makefile usage while I'm at it.


It's not "Bizarro", but rather rational.

Track down the paper "Recursive Make Considered Harmful" by Peter Miller.

The key point is to avoid recursive make. Not only does it slow builds down, but it often causes incorrect building and linking.

Also see if you can check history of things. widgets/ and dialogs/ vs. ui/widgets and ui/dialogs comes from early attempts to recreate things all-at-once instead of a more gradual C++ replacement path. For the most part the outdated files can be removed as long as they can be found to not be actively used.