Re: PATCH: Use GNU Makeisms to simplify libgcc build

[Tom Tromey <tromey at redhat dot com>]

>>>>> "Alexandre" == Alexandre Oliva <aoliva@redhat.com> writes:

Alexandre> If we eventually find out that we do have a good reason to
Alexandre> really require GNU make, fine.

We already require it for libgcj.

There are a few reasons for this.  Some of the problems could be fixed
by moving to a newer automake (subdir-objects).

Nobody has ever tried to come up with a portable fix for the "too many
filenames" problem, though.


I think it would be pretty easy to write obfuscated Makefiles using
GNU make.  But, just requiring GNU make doesn't ensure that outcome.
We can always reject obscurifying patches -- which we should do.
There's a big range between "I want one GNU make feature to solve
problem X" and "let's use every GNU make feature everywhere and,
voila, spaghetti for dinner" :-).  I think we can easily err on the
conservative side.

Tom