Re: [PATCH 1/4] Document new hard requirement on GNU make

Simon Marchi
2016-11-16T22:05:12Z

On 2016-11-16 12:23, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> With make >= 3.82, it would do the right thing (choose the second
>> one),
>> by choosing the rule with the shorter stem. Before that, it used the
>> order of definition (the first that matches wins). So it would be
>> nice
>> for that reason to require >= 3.82, but it's also possible to work
>> around if that's too recent.
>
> 3.82 shouldn't be a problem, I think.

Oops, I said that without even checking the version I have on my system.
Ubuntu 14.04, strangely, has make 3.81. Apparently that was because of
a critical bug on Debian with 3.82, which stayed open for a long time,
preventing the upgrade. Debian and its derivatives, including Ubuntu,
were stuck with that for a long time.

Refs:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31912233/how-to-update-make-3-81-linux
https://lwn.net/Articles/569920/

I don't think it's worth complicating the lives of those users just to
get the benefit of the behaviour change I mentioned.

So I'm back at having no idea what version we should require.