On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 10:32 AM, dexen deVries <dexen.devries@gmail.com>wrote:

> On Friday 05 of November 2010 18:18:44 Nick LaForge wrote:
> > > A honest question: what is the rationale for merging functionality of
> > > make and shell into one?
> >
> > Use your imagination....
>
> Tried, failed.
> To me, make is a tool for generating an acyclic, directed graph of
> dependencies  between build steps from some explicit and some wildcard
> rules
> -- and then traversing it in a sensible order. How's that for daily use
> shell?
>
>
Why is a shell that can generate acyclic digraphs of dependencies bad?
 Someone clearly found a use for it at some point or it wouldn't have been
done.

I guess one could try to use make as an init system for services in a
configuration, but I don't see why not having those features in a shell is
better than having those features in a shell.

I do not currently use mash, however, I wonder if it's suitable for a
startup mechanism for services just after booting a kernel, to get stuff
started in the right order, without lavish attempts at building up those
dependencies in a script that can't make acyclic digraphs of dependencies
make sense natively.


>
> Perhaps something about `doing a reasonable action for every target file
> named
> on the command line'?
>

The possibilities are finite!


>
> --
> dx
>
>