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From: Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer
Subject: Re: How to develop without an IDE?
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2012 23:15:29 +0100
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Robert Klemme wrote:

> On 23.04.2012 06:57, Nasser M. Abbasi wrote:
>> I found that using one good tool for everything is better than
>> mixing things.
> 
> Which, if followed religiously, will lead you into a situation where it
> can get really awkward to do things with tool A which would be extremely
> easy with tool B.

This isn't necessarily a problem, particularly if a person is already 
familiar with tool A while being completely unaware that tool B even 
existed.  

Then there is a significant issue with being forced to learn an entirely new 
tool just because there might be a single thing that it might be able to 
handle in a simpler way, and then being forced to deal with a significant 
list of things where the new tool fails to perform.  Unfortunately, this 
appears to be an undistinguishing feature of every automated build system 
that has been released.


>> Also, gnumake can do so many more things than just build source
>> code. I use it to update my html files and pdf files from
>> Latex sources, and other such things.
> 
> No wonder because make doesn't do *any* of these things.  Make evaluates
> timestamps along dependencies (mostly between files) and invokes other
> programs that do all the work.  GNU make additionally has an extremely
> large database of predefined rules, has functions and other capabilities.

There is nothing wrong with this.  In fact, I see it as an extremelly 
valuable feature.  It's a pain in the neck to shoe-horn custom build rules 
to an automated build system which was developed with them as an 
afterthought.


>> As long as the idea that drives the tool is: Perform this action
>> to update these prerequisites that this target depends on, then better
>> to use one tool that does this better and for many other things, not
>> just .java files.
> 
> Interestingly GNU make's large built in rule database does not contain
> anything related to compiling Java.  How do you create your Makefiles in
> a way as to invoke javac only for those files which have changed -
> especially in light of the fact that one Java source file might create
> multiple .class files?

Maybe build-in rules aren't needed, considering Make's static pattern rules.

http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html#Static-Pattern

<snip/>


Rui Maciel