configure -- used to generate the Makefile and maybe other files; like a "make.dat" file which is include'd by all Makefiles.
I'd avoid using this name if it isn't an autoconf-generated configure file.
I disagree. Unix people are used to ./configure make make tests make install (sometimes leaving out the "make tests" :) All that file is is an entry into the configuration system, regardless of being generated from autoconf or even hand written. I don't expect that anything I can generate will be useful by everyone for everything, and someday an autoconf type configure script will be needed (esp. for C/C++ code). When that happens, I expect that the new configure should be a drop-in replacement for the existing one, and end users should not notice the change.
I suspect it would be trivial, but haven't written any POD documentation myself, so I'm probably not the one to do it. ;-)
I've not used it either, but it seems to be the best solution available. I'll probably just use pod2text since we know that tool exists on our systems.
Most makes can't do nearly as much as GNU make; the most portable solution is "don't do that".
True enough. On one product I worked on we just shipped the gmake binary (and source) for the different platforms, since we couldn't get the Makefiles working everywhere. That's what taught me to start using $(MAKE) for recusive Makefiles. Still, according to the make documentation, I should be able to have a single suffix rule that works the way I want it to, as in: SUFFIXES: .dist .dist: $(ECHO) Do something but that doesn't work. Luckily, I again get the luxury of designing this for our in-house use, where I can mandate "we will use GNU make for our Makefiles". Andrew dalke@bioreason.com