Re: [PATCHv2] Makefile: implement help target

Jeff King [off-list ref] writes:

What I was trying to say was more that alphabetical is not necessarily
the most useful order to present things in the help screen. Probably
there is some hand-selected order that presents the entries in the least
confusing way. And one way of representing that is to have the topics in
that order in the Makefile, which in theory probably makes reading the
Makefile itself simpler.

I agree with this, even though I do not feel _too_ strongly about it.

By the way, while we are at adding "make help" support...

With help annotations in the Makefile like this:

        # Help: install everything
        # - the user visible commands go to $(bindir)
        # - helper programs go to $(gitexec_instdir)
        # - templates go to $(template_instdir)
        install: all
                $(INSTALL) -d -m 755 '$(DESTDIR_SQ)$(bindir_SQ)'

I imagine it would be really cool if "make help" said something like this:

    $ make help
    ...
    install:
      install everything
      - the user visible commands go to $(bindir) = /home/junio/bin
      - helper commands go to $(gitexec_instdir) = /home/junio/libexec/git-core
      - templates go to $(template_instdir) = /home/junio/share/git-core/templates

to help the builder figuring out what make variable(s) to tweak.  To be useful,
I think you would need to show the expansion, though.  E.g.

    - the user visible commands go to $(bindir) = /home/junio/bin
        bindir = $(prefix)/$(bindir_relative)
        prefix = $HOME
        HOME = /home/junio
        bindir_relative = bin

But again, I do not feel strongly about it either.