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Re: [CRAZY PROPOSAL] Automake should support only GNU make


From: Guido Draheim
Subject: Re: [CRAZY PROPOSAL] Automake should support only GNU make
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 13:57:50 +0100
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.16) Gecko/20101125 SUSE/3.0.11 Thunderbird/3.0.11

> 
> 
> [About GNU make]
> 
>  GNU make is a basic component of the GNU system, actively maintained and
>  developed, well documented, and required by other very important projects
>  (Linux Kernel and Git DVCS, for example).
> 
>  GNU make is very portable, easy to compile, and fully bootstrapping (its
>  build system does not require a pre-existing make installation).
>  
>  GNU make is the default make program on GNU/Linux (okay, we're in
>  full platitude land here, but I value completeness in this issue).
>  
>  GNU make is readily available in the FreeBSD port collection (and it's
>  required by many other ports to compile, see
>    <http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/developers-handbook/tools-make.html>
>  for more info).
> 
>  GNU make is available as a NetBSD package, for many architectures
>  and versions; for example:
>   
> <ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD/powerpc/4.0/devel/gmake-3.81.tgz>
>   
> <ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD/i386/5.0/devel/gmake-3.82nb1.tgz>
>   
> <ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD/sparc64/5.1/devel/gmake-3.81.tgz>
>  
> 
>  GNU make should also be available as a Solaris precompiled package:
>    <http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/freeware/>
>  or as an unofficial pre-compiled binary:
>    <http://www.sunfreeware.com/programlistintel10.html>.
> 
>  In conclusion, it's not unresonable to expect that a user ready to
>  compile a package from sources will also be ready and capable to obtain,
>  compile and install a non-ancient version of GNU make.
> 

Hi folks,

I haven't seen a reference to non-replace makefile-engines.

In reality all the previous makefile-systems (shipping along Solaris,
AIX, etc) have been subverted by GNU-Make - in almost any company that
I came across they had installed "gmake" in parallel with the native
makefile-system. And in the OpenSource world one can see many BSD packages
that have a build dependency on gmake these days.

However there are systems where gmake can not be run as a substitute,
this is atleast true for
* CmSynergy - ships objectmake (omake) integrated with the build system.
* ClearCase - ships clearmake integrated with the build systems.
and there are sure some other build systems that have a frontend to
the user allowing for makefiles as the backend.

These alternate makefile-systems had been modelled after standard
"make" plus some extensions which are usually compatible with GNU
Make. GNU Make has set the standard but GNU Make is NOT FREE to be
used as the backend of these non-GPL makefile-systems. Cough up a
free libgmake and you can assume its standard will be available
everywhere in a short time. But that's not how it is.

cheers, Guido




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