mock: death to recursive make

mock.sh

mock ()
{
    root=$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel);
    if [ -d "$root" ]; then
        ( cd $root;
        make $* );
    else
        echo "mock: nothing to do";
    fi
}

Mock

One Makefile to rule them all, in the root of your github repo.

mock passes its parameters to that Makefile.

Usage:

mock ARGS

Installation:

Add the above lines to your .bash_profile.

Motivation

Recursive makes have been considered harmful, for decades:

• 1997: the original "recursive make considered harmful" paper;
• 2009: a subsequent discussion;
• 2011: a blog endorsing the non-recursive approach;
• 2013: GHC Haskell uses non-recursive make.

Recently, I found myself committing the sin of recursive makes.

• Before I do a git commit, I run some autogen code to update some documentation files (e.g. a python code file gets rendered as a markdown file.
• Some of that autogen cd-ed to sub-directories and made stuff here or there.
• So building things meant different things in different directories and and and...
• That got messy so I wrote one Makefile to rule them all in the root of my repo. But that meant changing up there, and back again, just to do a repo commit.
• To fix that, I added lots of silly little Makefiles like this, one per directory in my repo.

Make = $(MAKE) --no-print-directory #

commit : ;cd ..; $(Make) commit
update : ;cd ..; $(Make) update
status : ;cd ..; $(Make) status

But with mock I need one, and only one, Makefile in the root of my github repo (and none of the silly little Makefiles anywhere else).