[Caml-list] State of .depend.nt files in the compiler

[Adrien Nader <adrien@notk.org>]

Hi,

I've started changing the compiler to get rid of the Makefile.nt files.
So far I'm still doing it in otherlibs/ and I'm a bit surprised by the
.depend.nt files.

As far as I can tell they are only needed by the MSVC port since they
are basically "sed 's/\.o/.$(O)/g'" and only the MSVC port has $(O) set
to something which isn't '.o' (it's '.obj').

There are also only two such files: in asmrun/ and in otherlibs/num/.
In otherlibs/systhreads/, there is no .depend.nt, only .depend and it's
being included by Makefile.nt.
Currently, for some of the otherlibraries, .c files will not be rebuilt
when the .h files they depend on are changed.

My questions:
- are the .depend.nt files actually used?
- are they to be commited in the source tree or should they be created
  at build-time through a "make depend.nt" call which only the MSVC
  require? (if the only thing to run is a few sed calls, that new step
  would be fast and safe)
- for directories where they don't currently exist, should they be added
  next to every ".depend" file?

And a bonus question:
- why is the "depend" rule in otherlibs/str/Makefile.nt implemented as a
  do-nothing step?

-- 
Adrien Nader