Subject: Re: Install issues

From: Andreas Ericsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 09:14:15 +0100

Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Miklos Vajna <[email-masked]> writes:
> 
>> On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 05:31:01PM +0100, "H.Merijn Brand" <[email-masked]> wrote:
>>> --- Makefile.org	2008-11-10 17:29:53.000000000 +0100
>>> +++ Makefile	2008-11-10 17:29:39.000000000 +0100
>>> @@ -1329,6 +1329,10 @@ check-sha1:: test-sha1$X
>>>  	./test-sha1.sh
>>>  
>>>  check: common-cmds.h
>>> +	@`sparse </dev/null 2>/dev/null` || (\
>>> +	    echo "The 'sparse' command is not available, so I cannot make the 'check' target" ;\
>>> +	    echo "Did you mean 'make test' instead?" ;\
>>> +	    exit 1 )
>>>  	for i in *.c; do sparse $(ALL_CFLAGS) $(SPARSE_FLAGS) $$i || exit; done
>> Please read Documentation/SubmittingPatches, your patch lacks a signoff
>> and a commit message.
> 
> Heh, for something small and obvious like this, that's asking a tad too
> much, although a properly formatted message does reduce my workload and is
> appreciated.
> 
> I said "obvious" not in the sense that it is "obviously good".  It is
> obvious what issue the patch wants to address.
> 
> Having said that, it is far from clear if special casing "make check" like
> this is a good thing, though.  The crufts resulting from "Four extra lines
> won't hurt" kind of reasoning can accumulate and snowball.  Is reading the
> Makefile when your build fails in order to see if the target was what you
> really wanted to invoke (ideally, it should rater be "_before_ running
> make, reading the Makefile to find out what you want to run") a lost art
> these days?
> 

Why not "make help" with as friendly a message as we can muster, like the
linux kernel does it?

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   [email-masked]
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
Tel: +46 8-230225                  Fax: +46 8-230231