Re: Fucked up gnustep-make

[Chris Vetter]

On 2007-02-13 21:40:26 +0100 Richard Frith-Macdonald 
<richard@tiptree.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> I suspect that comments like that do a lot to put developers off  
> working on 
> GNUstep, doing immeasurably more harm than breakage of  code in 
> svn-trunk.
> The implied notion that a change must be tested on all platforms  
> before 
> submission to svn-trunk in order to qualify as demonstrating  'some 
> care' is 
> frankly ridiculous and insulting.

No. I'm sorry, but no.

I'm NOT saying that code needs to be tested on every possible 
platform. That would indeed be ridiculous.

I'm saying that you should use a bit of brain-work before commiting 
code. Using a hard-coded call to make(1) simply ASSUMING that said 
make(1) IS actually 'GNU make' is, pardon my French, stupid.

It's even on the f'ing WIKI:

http://wiki.gnustep.org/index.php/Writing_portable_code#Do_not_rely_on_tools_available_in_development_environment

http://wiki.gnustep.org/index.php/Dependencies#GNUstep-make clearly 
states:
GNU make -- called gmake or gnumake on some systems

> The best way to report a bug is politely, and with helpful detail  
> about 
> where it actually occurred and on what system it was running etc..

Hell, if the core developers do not even try to write portable code, 
even though it's propagated on one of GNUstep's official sites...

> Now, anyone using gnustep-make must be using gnu-make, which supports 
>  the 
> --version flag.  So the question is why your system barfed?  It  must 
> have 
> been running some other make somehow.

GNUstep doesn't even check whether the make(1) it's calling IS GNU 
make. No, it's a hard-coded call, simply ASSUMING it is.
And to top it of, even though 'make --version' fails, the script is 
happily running along. Instead, it should complain about the non-GNU 
make(1) and quit.

> I'm not familiar with the most recent changes to gnustep-make, so I  
> don't 
> actually know where your problem is coming from.  Is this the  
> configure 
> script?

Of course it is configure.

>  If so, I guess the configure script needs to check  that it has 
> gnu-make before trying to use it.
> Any chance you could submit a patch to fix it?

See the links to WIKI above.

--
Chris