Remove `go generate` from v2 build process

[abitrolly]

My urfave/cli version is

v2

Checklist

• [x] Are you running the latest v2 release? The list of releases is here.
• [x] Did you check the manual for your release? The v2 manual is here
• [ ] Did you perform a search about this problem? Here's the GitHub guide about searching.

Dependency Management

• My project is using go modules.
• My project is using vendoring.
• My project is automatically downloading the latest version.
• I am unsure of what my dependency management setup is.

Describe the bug

The generation step when calling make from https://cli.urfave.org/CONTRIBUTING/#development-workflow takes way too much detours.

Observed behavior

graph LR
make --> build.go --> gogen[go generate] --> cli.go --> urfave-cli-genflags/make --> urfave-cli-genflags --> goimports

Expected behavior

At least this.

graph LR
make --> build.go --> urfave-cli-genflags/make --> urfave-cli-genflags --> goimports

Additional context

• There are no other usage of go generate except calling make from urfave-cli-genflags
• go generate is not called during go build process, so there is no implicit automation here

Did I miss anything?

Want to fix this yourself?

Yup. If there is no some hidden magic behind.

[dearchap]

@abitrolly Do you really want to optimize this since we are moving forward with v3 ? Does the analysis apply to v3 ?

[abitrolly]

@dearchap yes. That will make v2 maintenance easier. In case somebody needs to build it with modifications for debug.

[abitrolly]

v3 doesn't seem the be affected.

[dolmen]

Instead the build process should depend on go generate and not on make because that's the idiomatic way. See discussion in #1802 for opinions.

[abitrolly]

@dolmen "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail".

I need a reference that calling make from Go code is the idiomatic Go. As shown by https://github.com/urfave/cli/pull/1802#issuecomment-1953505678 it is make calling Go, then Go calling make to call an app. Much more maintainable it to have make call the app.