<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=windows-1252"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;"><br><div><div>On Feb 5, 2013, at 2:01 PM, Ryosuke Niwa <<a href="mailto:rniwa@webkit.org">rniwa@webkit.org</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div class="gmail_quote"><div><br></div><div>Using a YAML-like syntax, we can rewrite it as:</div><div><div><font face="courier new, monospace">XMLName:</font></div><div><font face="courier new, monospace"> inputs:</font></div>
<div><font face="courier new, monospace"> <(SHARED_INTERMEDIATE_DIR)/../dom/<a href="http://make_names.pl/">make_names.pl</a></font></div><div><font face="courier new, monospace"> <(SHARED_INTERMEDIATE_DIR)/../xml/<a href="http://xmlattrs.in/">xmlattrs.in</a></font></div>
<div><font face="courier new, monospace"> outputs:</font></div><div><font face="courier new, monospace"> XMLNames.cpp</font></div><div><font face="courier new, monospace"> XMLNames.h</font></div><div><font face="courier new, monospace"> action:</font></div>
<div><font face="courier new, monospace"> python scripts/action_makenames.py <@(_outputs) -- <@(_inputs) -- --extraDefines <(feature_defines)</font></div><div><font face="courier new, monospace"> msvs_cygwin_shell: True</font></div>
</div><div><br></div><div>To me, this YAML-like syntax reads significantly better.</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>It does seem like an improvement. Maybe inputs and outputs could also be space-separated instead of newline separated, like the action. That would still have a bit more overhead than make syntax, but at least it would be meaningful labels, rather than punctuation and newlines.</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div class="gmail_quote"><div>Now, I don't like all the magic strings like "<span style="font-family: 'courier new', monospace;"><(SHARED_INTERMEDIATE_DIR)/../</span>" and "<span style="font-family: 'courier new', monospace;"><@(_outputs) -- <@(_inputs) -- --extraDefines <(feature_defines)</span>". Can someone with build system knowlede prettify them?</div>
</div></blockquote><br></div><div>It's necessary to have some kind of syntax for variable expansion in the action command, and it likely can't be too verbose. Though something involving the $ character might look more obviously like a variable expansion.</div><div><br></div><div> - Maciej</div><div><br></div><br></body></html>