Martin von Gagern <martin.vgag...@gmx.net> writes: > And I'm still interested in some feedback what you think about turning > those syntax checks into a shell script file instead of embedding so > much ugly backslash-continued shell code into the makefile.
I'm not a fan of separate shell scripts, each new file to deal with seems to incur a small maintainance cost over time -- consider when they are renamed or moved. I think gnulib already install a large number of of files into projects using gnulib, so we should be conservative about increasing that number needlessly. If the downside with the alternative is a slightly more complex makefile, I think that is preferrably -- remember that false negatives (i.e., if the script fails to identify a problem) are not fatal, 'make syntax-check' is a regression tool to catch the most blatant issues, but undoubtedly a lot of things goes undetected. If someone notices an instance of something the script should have caught but didn't, that can always be fixed. In general I'm in favor of as simple code as possible, but I think here the cost with many new shell scripts outweigh the benefit of improved code. /Simon