On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 01:28:25PM +0100, Markus Teich wrote: > Nick wrote: > > I was reading the opengroup specifications for make(1) recently[0], > > and found that even our standard makefile practise of using 'include' > > for config variables is nonstandard, as far as they're concerned. > > Needless to say I think 'include' is a perfectly reasonable feature > > to use, and it evidently works everywhere that people care about. > > Heyho, > > Regarding the include config.mk used in various suckless projects: What is the > benefit? If a user needs to adapt it to his system, he effectively has to > edit a > file. Would there be a problem if this file would be the Makefile instead of > the > config.mk file?
It also makes it possible to modify the Makefile at will without causing potential conflict headaches for users. Sure that's also possible with config.mk but it is much less likely that it will change. Almost no one gets Makefiles right the first time, so they are subject to change.