Coding convention: use of `!x' vs. `! x'

[Akim Demaille]

>>>>> "Mark" == Mark Mitchell <mark@codesourcery.com> writes:

>>>>> "Tim" == Tim Josling <tej@melbpc.org.au> writes:
Tim> Before adding new standards I think it would be better to have
Tim> the existing standards followed more closely eg comments and
Tim> meaningful variable names. At present these are the major hurdles
Tim> in front of anyone wanting to help with GCC. In particular the
Tim> configure/make files are a major 'swamp of no return'.

Mark> I don't think it's either/or.  I would love to see the Makefiles
Mark> improved.  I actually looked at this stuff a few months back,
Mark> and couldn't quite do what I wanted to do -- which was to move a
Mark> lot more stuff to configure time, instead of Makefile evaluation
Mark> time.

Would you say much of the problems are coming from the fact that the
standards support things like

        ./configure
        make prefix=/foo

?  I'm personally strongly in favor of deprecating this practice, and
support only

        ./configure --prefix
        make

Your last sentence seems to indicate you met that frontier.