Review Parrot's 'make help'
completed by: Max Vorobuov
mentors: James E Keenan
Task Description
When a Parrot developer invokes make help, slightly over 100 lines are printed to STDOUT. Most of those lines describe various make targets. However, it has been a long time since these targets were reviewed for the following qualities:
- Existence: Does a particular target listed in help actually still exist in Makefile?
- Functionality: Does a particular target still work as documented?
- Accuracy: Does the help message really describe what the target does?
- Absence: Are there targets in Makefile which are not listed in help but which ought to be?
The assignment is to prepare a report which evaluates Parrot's make help with respect to the qualities listed above -- and any other relevant qualities. The report should appear in a plain-text file, but other formatting discussions may be negotiated between the GCI participant and mentor.
Steps To Complete This Task
- Create a fork of parrot.git on github.com
- Prepare the report described above and submit it as as an attachment to Trac ticket 1922.
- The report may be accompanied as appropriate by patches to config/gen/makefiles/root.in and other files in Parrot's configuration system used to generate the Makefile. Patches can be announced by git pull requests, but it would also be helpful to submit them as attachments to Trac ticket 1922 (above).
Benefits
- Parrot developer community will know what works and is documented in our Makefile and what does not.
Requirements
- Familiarity with make syntax requirements.
- Abillity to write reports.