#31 print nice text after make

[Carnë Draug]

Hi

after running make, it's not immediately obvious if the build was successful. I'd propose that it print a nice comforting message. For example, in Octave it prints:

Octave successfully built.  Now choose from the following:

   ./run-octave    - to run in place to test before installing
   make check      - to run the tests
   make install    - to install (PREFIX=/usr/local)

I tried to add the same on Makefile.am at all-local (like it's done in Octave) but it's not working. I tried a couple of other random things, trying to make it work, but my knowledge of GNU Make is obviously not great.

[Bob Friesenhahn]

We are using Automake, which has its own peculiar way to do things. In particular, Automake can do parallel builds so there could be 190 build steps being performed all at the same time. In order for this to work reliably there would have to be a sort of 'finally' hook added to Automake itself to be called after all of the other build steps have completed. There is currently no such feature in Automake. Without this capability, the 'done' message might print while the many other compilations are still occuring. The feature might be emulated but it would require adding a whole bunch of dependency rules which make things more complex and might cause problems.

Only make (e.g. GNU make) really knows when everything is done.

Sorry for taking so long to see this. A copy did not make it to my email inbox.

[Glenn Randers-Pehrson]

I just use a little shell script (build.sh) which contains

echo build gm8
make install
echo build gm8 done.

[Bob Friesenhahn]

Most other software does not do this. GraphicsMagick will stick to what Automake provides by default.