GNU bug report logs - #12411
24.2.50; No `make help' target?

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Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Bastien <bzg <at> altern.org>
To: bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org
Subject: 24.2.50; No `make help' target?
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2012 11:05:20 +0200

`make help' and `make targets' don't exist in last rev.

I think it would help.

In GNU Emacs 24.2.50.1 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.24.10)
 of 2012-09-10 on myhost
Bzr revision: 109965 cyd <at> gnu.org-20120910032510-vrblnwlfnsb0cx3s
Windowing system distributor `The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.11201000
Important settings:
  value of $LANG: fr_FR.UTF-8
  locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix
  default enable-multibyte-characters: t

-- 
 Bastien

Message #8 received at 12411 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Glenn Morris <rgm <at> gnu.org>
To: Bastien <bzg <at> altern.org>
Cc: 12411 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#12411: 24.2.50; No `make help' target?
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2012 15:14:27 -0400

Bastien wrote:

> `make help' and `make targets' don't exist in last rev.

In general, Emacs has the standard GNU Makefile targets:

  http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Standard-Targets.html

Your proposed two are not in that list.
Could you say what you want them to do?

Message #11 received at 12411 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Bastien <bzg <at> altern.org>
To: Glenn Morris <rgm <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 12411 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#12411: 24.2.50; No `make help' target?
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2012 22:34:36 +0200

Glenn Morris <rgm <at> gnu.org> writes:

> Bastien wrote:
>
>> `make help' and `make targets' don't exist in last rev.
>
> In general, Emacs has the standard GNU Makefile targets:
>
>   http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Standard-Targets.html
>
> Your proposed two are not in that list.
> Could you say what you want them to do?

My bad, I thought the `help' target was a GNU standard.

`make help' would display a one-line help about the various
available targets:

# make all	
# make install	
# make TAGS	
# make clean  (or  make mostlyclean)
# make distclean
# make maintainer-clean
# make extraclean
# make bootstrap

(Taken from INSTALL, not from the actual Makefile.)

If I'm not confused, the last two targets are not in the 
GNU standards (`bootstrap' and `extraclean').  

Documenting `make extraclean' is not important IMO but 
documenting `make bootstrap' could be: there are often
questions on emacs-devel which are answered by "You need 
to `make bootstrap'."

I guess `make help' could give a better exposure to this
option?

-- 
 Bastien

Message #14 received at 12411 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Glenn Morris <rgm <at> gnu.org>
To: Bastien <bzg <at> altern.org>
Cc: 12411 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#12411: 24.2.50; No `make help' target?
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2012 03:52:59 -0400

Bastien wrote:

> `make help' would display a one-line help about the various
> available targets:

sed -n 's/^\([a-z]*\):.*/\1/p' Makefile  # plus uniq...

They are all pretty much standard targets, and documented at the top of
the Makefile.

> Documenting `make extraclean' is not important IMO but documenting
> `make bootstrap' could be: there are often questions on emacs-devel
> which are answered by "You need to `make bootstrap'."

It is written in INSTALL.BZR...

> I guess `make help' could give a better exposure to this option?

I'm not optimistic that any more people will read this than read
INSTALL.BZR or the commentary in the Makefile.

Message #17 received at 12411 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Bastien <bzg <at> altern.org>
To: Glenn Morris <rgm <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 12411 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#12411: 24.2.50; No `make help' target?
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2012 11:59:12 +0200

Glenn Morris <rgm <at> gnu.org> writes:

> I'm not optimistic that any more people will read this than read
> INSTALL.BZR or the commentary in the Makefile.

Fair enough.  My basic assumption is that users are used to run 
`make help' when they are trying to understand what they do, but
that may be wrong.

-- 
 Bastien

Message #20 received at 12411 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Glenn Morris <rgm <at> gnu.org>
To: Bastien <bzg <at> altern.org>
Cc: 12411 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#12411: 24.2.50; No `make help' target?
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2012 22:47:26 -0400

Bastien wrote:

> Glenn Morris <rgm <at> gnu.org> writes:
>
>> I'm not optimistic that any more people will read this than read
>> INSTALL.BZR or the commentary in the Makefile.
>
> Fair enough.  My basic assumption is that users are used to run 
> `make help' when they are trying to understand what they do, but
> that may be wrong.

I think you should feel free to add such a target if you think it will
be useful to people. Don't let my pessimism discourage you! :)
(I've never tried to run `make help' for anything.)

Message #23 received at 12411 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Stefan Monnier <monnier <at> iro.umontreal.ca>
To: Glenn Morris <rgm <at> gnu.org>
Cc: Bastien <bzg <at> altern.org>, 12411 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#12411: 24.2.50; No `make help' target?
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2012 23:23:19 -0400

> sed -n 's/^\([a-z]*\):.*/\1/p' Makefile  # plus uniq...
> They are all pretty much standard targets, and documented at the top of
> the Makefile.

It's not always easy to find the doc corresponding to a given target, so
I think it would indeed be a good idea to make "make help" return some
useful info.
I also think it would be a valuable addition to the GNU coding standards.
Just like all commands should accept a "--help", it would make sense for
the main Makefile to do something useful with "make help".


        Stefan

Message #26 received at 12411 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Stefan Monnier <monnier <at> iro.umontreal.ca>
To: Glenn Morris <rgm <at> gnu.org>
Cc: Bastien <bzg <at> altern.org>, 12411 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#12411: 24.2.50; No `make help' target?
Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 08:43:42 -0400

> (I've never tried to run `make help' for anything.)

Indeed, it's not a standard target, so it'll benefit from being
advertised in things like INSTALL.


        Stefan

Message #29 received at 12411 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Stefan Kangas <stefan <at> marxist.se>
To: Stefan Monnier <monnier <at> iro.umontreal.ca>
Cc: Glenn Morris <rgm <at> gnu.org>, 12411 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, Bastien <bzg <at> altern.org>
Subject: Re: bug#12411: 24.2.50; No `make help' target?
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2019 01:09:32 +0200

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

Stefan Monnier <monnier <at> iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> sed -n 's/^\([a-z]*\):.*/\1/p' Makefile  # plus uniq...
>> They are all pretty much standard targets, and documented at the top of
>> the Makefile.
>
> It's not always easy to find the doc corresponding to a given target, so
> I think it would indeed be a good idea to make "make help" return some
> useful info.
> I also think it would be a valuable addition to the GNU coding standards.
> Just like all commands should accept a "--help", it would make sense for
> the main Makefile to do something useful with "make help".

How about something like the attached patch?

I'm not a Makefile expert, so I couldn't find a way to skip the
configure step and immediately echo.

Thanks,
Stefan Kangas

[0001-Add-new-make-help-target.patch (text/x-patch, attachment)]

Message #32 received at 12411 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Stefan Kangas <stefan <at> marxist.se>
Cc: bzg <at> altern.org, 12411 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, monnier <at> iro.umontreal.ca
Subject: Re: bug#12411: 24.2.50; No `make help' target?
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2019 19:57:08 +0300

> From: Stefan Kangas <stefan <at> marxist.se>
> Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2019 01:09:32 +0200
> Cc: 12411 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, Bastien <bzg <at> altern.org>
> 
> I'm not a Makefile expert, so I couldn't find a way to skip the
> configure step and immediately echo.

There's GNUmakefile which could be used for that purpose.

> +	@echo "make clean            -- delete files from build"
> +	@echo "make mostlyclean      -- delete most files from build"
> +	@echo "make distclean        -- delete files from build and configure"
> +	@echo "make maintainer-clean -- delete almost everything that can be regenerated"

It would be good to have these 4 more descriptive.  The above
basically just repeats the target names, which is not very helpful.

> +	@echo "make bootstrap        -- delete all files and force a new bootstrap"

"Delete all files" sounds scary, and is also incorrect.

> +	@echo "make uninstall        -- delete all installed files"

I'd say "remove files installed by 'make install'"

> +	@echo "make docs             -- generate Emacs documentation"
> +	@echo "make html             -- generate html documentation"
> +	@echo "make ps               -- generate ps documentation"
> +	@echo "make pdf              -- generate pdf documentation"

The description of "make docs" should tell which formats it produces,
otherwise its relation to the 3 other docs-related targets is not
clear.

Thanks.

Message #35 received at 12411 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Stefan Kangas <stefan <at> marxist.se>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: Bastien Guerry <bzg <at> altern.org>, 12411 <at> debbugs.gnu.org,
 Stefan Monnier <monnier <at> iro.umontreal.ca>
Subject: Re: bug#12411: 24.2.50; No `make help' target?
Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2019 01:56:14 +0200

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org> writes:

> > I'm not a Makefile expert, so I couldn't find a way to skip the
> > configure step and immediately echo.
>
> There's GNUmakefile which could be used for that purpose.

Thanks.  I think I was able to find a good way to do it using that file.

> > +     @echo "make clean            -- delete files from build"
> > +     @echo "make mostlyclean      -- delete most files from build"
> > +     @echo "make distclean        -- delete files from build and configure"
> > +     @echo "make maintainer-clean -- delete almost everything that can be regenerated"
>
> It would be good to have these 4 more descriptive.  The above
> basically just repeats the target names, which is not very helpful.

I've extended that.

> > +     @echo "make bootstrap        -- delete all files and force a new bootstrap"
>
> "Delete all files" sounds scary, and is also incorrect.

Fixed.

> > +     @echo "make uninstall        -- delete all installed files"
>
> I'd say "remove files installed by 'make install'"

Done.

> > +     @echo "make docs             -- generate Emacs documentation"
> > +     @echo "make html             -- generate html documentation"
> > +     @echo "make ps               -- generate ps documentation"
> > +     @echo "make pdf              -- generate pdf documentation"
>
> The description of "make docs" should tell which formats it produces,
> otherwise its relation to the 3 other docs-related targets is not
> clear.

Done.

> Thanks.

Thanks for reviewing.  Please find attached a revised patch,
incorporating your changes and also announcing this feature in NEWS
for bigger visibility.

Best regards,
Stefan Kangas

[0001-Add-new-make-help-target.patch (application/octet-stream, attachment)]

Message #38 received at 12411 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
To: Stefan Kangas <stefan <at> marxist.se>
Cc: bzg <at> altern.org, 12411 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, monnier <at> iro.umontreal.ca
Subject: Re: bug#12411: 24.2.50; No `make help' target?
Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2019 14:28:56 +0300

> From: Stefan Kangas <stefan <at> marxist.se>
> Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2019 01:56:14 +0200
> Cc: Stefan Monnier <monnier <at> iro.umontreal.ca>, 12411 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, 
> 	Bastien Guerry <bzg <at> altern.org>
> 
> Thanks for reviewing.  Please find attached a revised patch,
> incorporating your changes and also announcing this feature in NEWS
> for bigger visibility.

LGTM, thanks.

Message #43 received at 12411 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Stefan Kangas <stefan <at> marxist.se>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: Bastien Guerry <bzg <at> altern.org>, 12411 <at> debbugs.gnu.org,
 Stefan Monnier <monnier <at> iro.umontreal.ca>
Subject: Re: bug#12411: 24.2.50; No `make help' target?
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2019 12:01:03 +0200

close 12411 27.1
quit

Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org> writes:

> > Thanks for reviewing.  Please find attached a revised patch,
> > incorporating your changes and also announcing this feature in NEWS
> > for bigger visibility.
>
> LGTM, thanks.

Thanks.  Now pushed as commit 9df285250b.

Best regards,
Stefan Kangas

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