Re: Why does make run git?

[Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>]

Richard Stallman wrote:
> I was surprised to see this output from `make'.  What does this do?
> It seems fundamentally unmodular for building Emacs from sources
> to concern itself in any way with how you got those sources.

Make configures Git only if you got the sources via Git and have not configured 
Emacs. If you got the sources via some other means, or have already configured 
Emacs, Make doesn't configure Git. So I don't see a violation of modularity 
here; it's merely a convenience that Make supplies a default configuration if 
you haven't already configured things.

If you prefer to not configure Git even though you got the sources via Git, you 
can run 'make ALL_IF_GIT=' or './configure; make' after grabbing the sources. 
However, the default Git configuration is typically more convenient.

> Running make on the Emacs checkout seems like an inadequate place to
> do this.  There is no assurance that you will run make in that
> checkout before committing anything.

That's true. However, these are only guidelines, and it's not a huge tragedy if 
the guidelines are occasionally violated.

> Perhaps there should be a function in Emacs that does this, and some
> VC commands could call it.

That would be nice. However, some developers don't use Emacs VC to check in (I 
typically use vc-dwim instead), and so it's good to have Git check things as well.