[Python-Dev] Demo/embed causes 'import site' failure

[Greg Ward]

On 10 July 2000, Guido van Rossum said:
> Makefile includes are notoriously unportable, aren't they?  The
> embed/Makefile is a lame excuse for a Makefile -- it has XXX comments
> all over the place telling you to edit things to match the Python main
> Makefile... :-(  My fault -- feel free to fix!

I think the mere existence of an "include" directive is pretty
well-established.  What's not portable, in my experience, is relying in
neat-o semantics supplied by GNU make and (maybe? can't remember) SGI's
decent make (smake I think? plain make under IRIX 4 and 5 was hopelessly
brain-damaged).  Specifically, GNU make will treat a missing include
file not as an error, but something that should be rebuilt using the
usual dependency rules.  Apparently this is useful for including header
dependency info in the Makefile, but of course it ties you right to GNU
make.

If you believe the "Recursive Make Considered Harmful" paper, it's
probably better to rely on the ability to include Makefile fragments
than to invoke make recursively.  (It sound plausible to me, but I
haven't tried out the ideas from that paper seriously yet.)

        Greg