Introduce ENDLIST to terminate multiline makefile lists
Chao Li <li.evan.chao@gmail.com>
From: Chao Li <li.evan.chao@gmail.com>
To: Postgres hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Date: 2025-12-29T01:43:30Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
Attachments
- v1-0001-Introduce-ENDLIST-to-terminate-multiline-makefile.patch (application/octet-stream)
Hi Hacker, Patch [1] reminded me of a technique that was used long ago in my early C/C++ projects at Lucent Technologies (for those who still remember the company :) ). In those projects, multi-line lists in Makefiles were always terminated with $(ENDLIST), where ENDLIST is just a global dummy variable. The benefits are: * It clearly marks the end of a list. * Adding or removing items does not require worrying about a trailing “\”. * Changes at the end of a list do not introduce extra diff noise from adjusting backslashes. This is not a new invention on my part. I’m simply proposing to bring this existing technique into the PostgreSQL source tree. In this patch, I’ve only applied $(ENDLIST) to the Makefiles touched by [1]. If this approach is acceptable, I can follow up with a patch to apply it more broadly. Note that since ENDLIST is defined in Makefile.global.in, this change requires rerunning ./configure. [1] https://postgr.es/m/DF6HDGB559U5.3MPRFCWPONEAE@jeltef.nl Best regards, -- Chao Li (Evan) HighGo Software Co., Ltd. https://www.highgo.com/