Re: building HEAD needs GNU make

[Eric Blake]

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According to Ralf Wildenhues on 2/24/2007 5:55 AM:
> Our convoluted build rules in HEAD's Makefile.am currently pretty much
> require GNU make.  There's the odd other make implementation that will
> work well, and most others will more or less work but attempt to rerun 
> all autotools, do a full recheck, or two, upon each invocation.

That's a bit of a shame: since the eventual M4 2.0 depends on Libtool, you
are now adding one more hard dependency into the mix when bootstrapping a
non-GNU system to support the GNU toolchain (with M4 1.4.x, the system
make and system C compiler were adequate).  But I suppose I can live with
it, as I currently don't have the time to investigate how to break the
dependence.
> 
> Do you think that the following patch is ok?  It doesn't attempt to
> change the generic INSTALL file.  Do you think we should rather do that
> instead?  Do you think using the string `gmake' is ok/helpful/bad?

Not every platform has gmake by default (for example, cygwin comes with
GNU make only installed as "make"), but it is a common enough idiom that
developers should be able to figure it out.  Maybe it is worth adding a
note up front that gmake refers to the user's installation of GNU make?

- --
Don't work too hard, make some time for fun as well!

Eric Blake             address@hidden
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