[mkpankov]

I ended up using $(eval ...) a lot, and turns out Make's support for it is... suboptimal.

As for paper - I believe it's "Recursive Make Considered Harmful" - I read it, it's great. Was one of the main motivators during build system rewrite.

[dlundqvist]

Three or four levels down in $(eval ...) and $(call ...) still makes me stop and think how many $ I should have.

Yes, that's the paper, I was also heavily motivated by it. And when I read JDK also switched[1] to something similar, it just cemented my belief it was the right way to go, for the same reasons as for them.

[1] - http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/138