Re: Running make for autoconf V2.13 with HP-UX 11.0

[Akim Demaille]

Bob Proulx <address@hidden> writes:

> Agreed.  But a few additional words.  HP make is stock classic AT&T
> System V UNIX make.  Which "should" be fine.  It is not a bad make.
> It is just the very traditional UNIX version and limited by those same
> traditions.  Unfortunately it is frozen in time and not evolving to
> keep up anymore.  But this is not really a problem.  As soon as you
> start building programs there is no reason not to make GNU make the
> first program you build.  You should compile up GNU make right at the
> start and get the better of the two makes running first.  Then
> everything else is easier.

I've received tons of bug reports about failures during the build
phase of a2ps, people complaining of my requiring yacc, lex, msg*
etc.  I did not require it, everything was shipped.

The problem turned out to be (well, at least that the simplest
explanation I could come to, and simplest is often equivalent to
right) that everywhere where there is sources depending on meta
sources, it loses, and wants to rebuild them.

In a simple .c -> .o, it is OK, byt .y -> .c -> .o seems too much for
it.

At the end I was answering `install GNU Make', and the problems were
always vanishing away *with the same untared ball*, i.e., you can't
even think something related to rotten time stamps.  On the same
layout HP Make wants to rebuild things, and GNU Make sees it's not
needed.

Today we have the `missing' technology which should make this issue
less harmful, but I kept from all these `bug reports' a serious grief
against HP Make.

(Hm, could it be related to some .SECONDARY or so?  Some different
default behavior?).