Towards non-recursive makefiles

[Michael Elizabeth Chastain]

Hmmm.  Consider this use case: a developer is working on the qnx4 file
system.  They want to edit code, make qnx4fs.o, insmod qnx4fs.o, play with it,
rmmod qnx4fs, and edit the source again.

In the baseline Makefiles they do this: "make SUBDIRS=fs/qnx4 modules"
in their "make" window.  In my Dancing Makefiles, it's even easier:
they type "make" in the current directory and it makes qnx4fs.o.

With a non-recursive Makefile, they would do: "make" in the top-level
directory and it would grovel over the whole tree noticing that some
files in fs/qnx4 are the only thing that changed.

So, you have to make that fast enough (and quiet enough) to work well
in that use case.

So how do you handle that use case?

Note: I would *like* make to grovel over the whole tree if it can be made
fast enough, because that is more correct than relying on the developer.

Michael

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