Re: [PATCH 0/4] Makefile improvements and cleanups

[Simon Marchi <simon.marchi@polymtl.ca>]

On 2016-11-15 11:56, Pedro Alves wrote:
> On 11/13/2016 03:26 PM, Simon Marchi wrote:
>> As an honest follow-up question: do we need to stay compatible with
>> other makes than GNU make?  From what I can see, Open/Net/FreeBSD all
>> use gmake to build their port of GDB already.
> 
> You mean their ports scripts?  Can you provide some url for reference?

Sure:

FreeBSD has "USES = gmake"
   https://svnweb.freebsd.org/ports/head/devel/gdb/Makefile?view=co

OpenBSD has "USE_GMAKE = Yes"
   
http://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/~checkout~/ports/devel/gdb/Makefile?rev=1.45&content-type=text/plain

NetBSD has "USE_TOOLS += gmake"
   http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/current/pkgsrc/devel/gdb/Makefile

> John, could you comment from the FreeBSD side?
> 
>> I don't know about other
>> OSes on which people build GDB on (Windows, OS X, Solaris?).  If GNU
>> make is readily available on these, perhaps we can consider making it 
>> a
>> requirement?
> 
> I (and others) have argued before about requiring GNU Make.  I think
> last was here:
> 
>   https://sourceware.org/ml/binutils/2014-05/msg00263.html
> 
> I think it makes a lot of sense.  FWIW, whenever I build GDB on the 
> compile
> farm on some non-GNU machine, like FreeBSD, AIX, NetBSD, etc., I've 
> always
> used the preinstalled GNU make.
> 
> Time to just do it?  We'd need a NEWS entry, I suppose.

I'll wait a bit to collect some more feedback, and if the idea seems 
accepted I'll do another series for:

- Documenting the GNU make requirement
- Using pattern rules (patches 1 and 2 of this series)

In the mean time I'll prepare a v2 for patches 3 and 4, which don't 
depend on GNU make.

Thanks,

Simon