Re: Install issues

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Miklos Vajna <vmiklos@frugalware.org> writes:

> On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 05:31:01PM +0100, "H.Merijn Brand" <h.m.brand@xs4all.nl> wrote:
>> --- Makefile.org	2008-11-10 17:29:53.000000000 +0100
>> +++ Makefile	2008-11-10 17:29:39.000000000 +0100
>> @@ -1329,6 +1329,10 @@ check-sha1:: test-sha1$X
>>  	./test-sha1.sh
>>  
>>  check: common-cmds.h
>> +	@`sparse </dev/null 2>/dev/null` || (\
>> +	    echo "The 'sparse' command is not available, so I cannot make the 'check' target" ;\
>> +	    echo "Did you mean 'make test' instead?" ;\
>> +	    exit 1 )
>>  	for i in *.c; do sparse $(ALL_CFLAGS) $(SPARSE_FLAGS) $$i || exit; done
>
> Please read Documentation/SubmittingPatches, your patch lacks a signoff
> and a commit message.

Heh, for something small and obvious like this, that's asking a tad too
much, although a properly formatted message does reduce my workload and is
appreciated.

I said "obvious" not in the sense that it is "obviously good".  It is
obvious what issue the patch wants to address.

Having said that, it is far from clear if special casing "make check" like
this is a good thing, though.  The crufts resulting from "Four extra lines
won't hurt" kind of reasoning can accumulate and snowball.  Is reading the
Makefile when your build fails in order to see if the target was what you
really wanted to invoke (ideally, it should rater be "_before_ running
make, reading the Makefile to find out what you want to run") a lost art
these days?