RFR: 8330107: Separate out "awt" libraries from Awt2dLibraries.gmk [v3]

[Magnus Ihse Bursie]

On Tue, 16 Apr 2024 10:03:27 GMT, Magnus Ihse Bursie <ihse at openjdk.org> wrote:

>> The file to build most of the java.desktop native libraries, Awt2dLibraries.gmk, is large and unstructured, making it hard to navigate.
>> 
>> I want to split it into two parts, one for the AWT libraries, and one for the 2D libraries. I also used this opportunity to change the order to be more logical (e.g. grouping "image" libraries and "font" libraries in 2D).
>
> Magnus Ihse Bursie has updated the pull request incrementally with two additional commits since the last revision:
> 
>  - Make the split based on the name "awt" instead, and document the reason
>  - Rename 2dLibraries.gmk to ClientLibraries.gmk

**I** am the one working with this file all the time, not you. There is no good IDE support for Makefiles, especially not with the level of customization that we have done to make. I am positively struggling with navigating this file, time and time again.

Can that not be enough reason for you to accept that I want to split this file into more manageable chunks? Nothing here will affect how the actual client libraries are built. It is *purely* about making this part of the JDK build less of a complete PITA for me. Why are you opposing this? I tried two different approaches, and suggested a third (alphabetic) and you just say "no".  I don't find this very constructive or helpful.

This is not the first time we split a makefile into "arbitrary" chunks. Since make is not a proper programming language, there is no way to express abstraction, objects or other clear delimiters. The most recently file that was split this way was JdkNativeCompilation.gmk. One of the first was configure.ac. All those split were "arbitrary" and "artificial", but they are still good enough to provide help to the poor sods that need to work with those files.

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PR Comment: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/18743#issuecomment-2059708051