When maintaining or merging patches, one of the most common sources
for conflicts are the list of objects in makefiles. Especially when
the split across lines has been changed on both sides, which is
somewhat common due to attempting to stay below 80 columns, those
conflicts are unnecessarily laborious to resolve.
By splitting, and alphabetically sorting, OBJS style lines into one
object per line, conflicts should be less frequent, and easier to
resolve when they still occur.
Author: Andres Freund
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/20191029200901.vww4idgcxv74cwes@alap3.anarazel.de
Prominent binaries already had this metadata. A handful of minor
binaries, such as pg_regress.exe, still lack it; efforts to eliminate
such exceptions are welcome.
Michael Paquier, reviewed by MauMau.
Tom Lane
Andres Freund
Noah Misch
Magnus Hagander