Re: [PATCH v3 4/5] Makefile: the "cscope" target always creates a "cscope.out"

On Thu, Jul 22 2021, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Taylor Blau [off-list ref] writes:

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 cscope.out: $(FOUND_SOURCE_FILES)
-	$(QUIET_GEN)$(RM) cscope* && \
-	echo $(FOUND_SOURCE_FILES) | xargs cscope -b
+	$(QUIET_GEN)$(RM) cscope.out && \
+	echo $(FOUND_SOURCE_FILES) | xargs cscope -f$@ -b

But that alone is a good change in my mind at least. Then it's clear
that that target is responsible for generating cscope.out and nothing
else.

Probably.  The preparatory $(RM) is close enough to the invocation
of cscope that anybody adding other options like '-q' should be
careful enough to notice that the line needs to be touched, too, so
I can be talked into thinking that $(RM) change here is a good one.
I do not know about "-f$@", which is "Meh" to me.  Is there a good
reason to suspect that they might want to change the default output
filename?

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So I'd be in favor of rewording the patch message and only retaining
this hunk (and dropping the other two).

Yup.  I do not mind dropping one half of this hunk, too, but again,
I do not mind keeping -f$@, either [*1*].


[Footnote]

*1* if the patch to add cscope support anew were done with -f$@, I
   wouldn't have insisted removing it, out of the principle "any Meh
   change is not worth applying once the code was written and
   working".

As long as we have no user of a -q flag ever, what's the point of
forever carrying the "rm foo*" when we know it's foo.out, just because a
future Makefile change might add foo.blah?

Doesn't seem like something we'd trip over, and the .gitignore/rm rule
is just misleading now...