Makefiles again

On Mon, Feb 09, 2015 at 04:39:01PM -0500, al davis wrote:
> The 3-part makefile is something I came up with before autotools 
> existed, and I still believe it is the best way to go.  It has 
> gotten messed up on its own over the years and needs to go back 
> to its roots.
> 
> The 3 parts:
> Make1 is this project.
> Make2 is configuration.
> Make3 is boiler plate, always the same.

i do not understand the three makefile approach. but we had that.
it sounds fun. lets go on with a few simple aspects.

currently Make2 includes rules, something about .cc.o:. is this
considered configuration?

what about a "Makefile"? is this supposed to just include the other
ones? should configure create it?

> Originally I would hand edit Make2, and often I still prefer to 
> do that.

so Make2 is not there before configure has run, and (optionally) edited
by hand.  and somehow included if you type "make"...  what will a
configure run do to your hand crafted Make2?

> The way I want to use autotools is to generate Make2, and use 
> its version of Make3.

usually, configure creates the makefiles. is this what you mean? where
does Make3 come from?

> As it stands, it actually sort of does that, but then scrambles 
> it all up into a big mess, and scatters it all over the project 
> root directory.

the amount of user serviceable parts is small, which i think is most
important. the amount of mess... well i don't care, as long as it works.

> The removal was because I couldn't figure out how to deal with 
> plugins properly, and it was easy with plain old make.

we had that. i simply don't get what you mean. what does *not* work for
you with the current autotools branch? is it just the missing Make2?
dissecting/renaming some files will not immediately add functionality.

cheers
felix