Manual Makefiles: Do we want them and how to maintain them? about stdlib HOT 4 CLOSED

It seems the most common changes to the build system that occasional contributors have to do are:

• adding a new module
• adding a test (possibly with some test data files)

I think that's pretty much it. A change like adding a new dependency (say Lapack, or FFTW) would have to be handled by us anyway, as it requires changes to our CI, documentation, etc.

from stdlib.

I think the most important advantage of manual Makefiles is:

• Explicitly shows how to build the project with all the compiler options pretty much spelled out explicitly. Thus providing a clean and clear instructions how to build the project --- i.e., how to copy the stdlib_*.f90 files into production codes and how to update the production code's build system to build those.

Regarding how to maintain it, that's easy: our CI will build both CMake and manual Makefiles. Contributors submit a PR. If they forgot to update the Makefiles, then the CI fails, so they will get alerted, and most contributors will know how to fix it up, if they add a new module or add a new test file. For anything more complicated, we help them.

Yes, I am very happy to volunteer as a Makefile maintainer, in addition to all the other things I already implicitly volunteered for: CMake maintainer, git maintainer (helping contributors with git), etc. So by keeping things simple, I hope we can have lots of people being able to maintain our infrastructure.

from stdlib.

Please have a look at my fortdep project. It can auto-generate dependencies and entire makefiles. If there are any issues i can fix/implement them in priority mode.

from stdlib.

@gronki thanks! Here is the direct link: https://github.com/gronki/fortdep

from stdlib.