[Meta] Prefered look of Makefiles

[ja-pa]

@BKPepe @val-kulkov @neheb
Hi,
I would like to start a discussion about the preferred look of Makefiles.

This is an extension of discussion from PR #9667 (comment)

My idea is, if we could define some guidelines how should Makefile look (variable orders, tabs usage etc.) in a more explicit way. I believe that it can have advantages of in case of change review and possibly in future, this could be used as a specification for a tool which could check that automatically.

[ja-pa]

I personally prefer template described here by @BKPepe #9399 (comment)

[BKPepe]

I agree we should have a template to which all of we will stick, otherwise, somebody will do it how he/she likes it and we can start with that one, which was mention in that PR. Thanks to @neheb in most Makefiles, there is order in them.

However, it's not updated in OpenWrt documentation either in mwarning's openwrt-examples. We should update both of them.

Another point of this discussion should be about PKG_SOURCE_URL. Do we prefer there .git or not? Talking about this #9626 (comment) . Maybe this point should be discussed with OpenWrt main repository. From my point of view, there should be .git.

I think we are catching mixed indentation and would be good if somewhere can be mention this quote

Jul 28 21:57:57 ynezz: https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/Recipe-Syntax.html - line starts with tab => shell command; spaces => make syntax

On the other hand, we can do it in a community maintained repository how we want to do it, but it should be discussed and updated in OpenWrt main repository as well.

[neheb]

The lack of .git is a GitHub feature. Other git repositories require it.

Maybe download.mk can be modified to pattern match on the URL. If there’s.git at the end, use git by default. Otherwise use curl/wget

[karlp]

I feel this is just an invitation to keep churning things that aren't really relevant 99% of the time.

[ja-pa]

I think it would be beneficial even just as a recommendation. Right now these pieces of information are written in different issues and MR (like #8738 (comment) ...) and some maintainers insist on them.

[val-kulkov]

@ja-pa : openwrt.org is a Wiki. Go ahead and edit it if you feel the recommendations should be published there.

[BKPepe]

I need to quote #4119 (comment) from @stintel :

We should always aim for consistency, and this commit will hopefully avoid people copying it in new packages, which in turn should result in less changes requested. So less work for both reviewers and contributors.

[karlp]

... and some maintainers insist on them.
And I reject what those maintainers insist on, until they're documented properly.

[hnyman]

I feel that trying to enforce any mandatory rules for Makefile variable order will not work in real life in the long run. That might lead into abandoned PRs as some authors can't/won't amend their commits, so the PRs would just be there after the first commeting round about Makefile polishing.

Similarly, I do not much see point in the current activity of reordering existing Makefiles. Usually you are just looking at one package at a time, and the exact order of statements does not matter much.

The core thing is to have and maintain packages that do compile and actually work.

[diizzyy]

It clearly works for other distros.... (just sayin') however it should be properly documented before being enforced.

Examples:
https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/porting-order.html
https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/porters-handbook/porting-portlint.html
https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/porters-handbook/

[champtar]

In my opinion, the only way to enforce it is via the CI.
When people submit PR, they are ready to make some changes if they have almost instant feedback, but if you wait 2 weeks, this can be discouraging if the only blocker is style.