Re: PATCH: Use GNU Makeisms to simplify libgcc build

[Alexandre Oliva <aoliva at redhat dot com>]

On Aug 29, 2003, DJ Delorie <dj@redhat.com> wrote:

>> We already require it for libgcj.

> Despite many objections, plus complaints from the BSD folks.

And the funny thing is that I was the one who consciously introduced
that dependency on GNU make :-)  That was meant to be a stopgap until
the Makefiles were rearranged so as to enable an alternate
implementation, but I guess nobody was sufficiently motivated to do
it.

I'm slowing getting over the outrage and seeing that there may be
advantages to using GNU make, after all.  I just don't want us to find
ourselves in a situation in which anyone (or rather anyone with global
write privileges) feels going ``hey!, this GNU make features is neat,
lemme find a way to use it,'', but I guess I shouldn't have pictured
this sort of behavior coming from people that we trust enough to grant
them global write privileges ;-)

Let's just say that I'd like us to start depending on GNU make very
slowly, as in testing the waters, to see what kind of feedback we get
after a major release using features that wouldn't be too hard to
revert in case negative feedback about this new requirement is
overwhelming.  Then, if we find that the decision is sound, we start
relying on GNU make more pervasively.

In order to not delay the adoption of GNU make features we'd really
like to use until say 3.5, we might even consider introducing a, shall
I say, gratuitous dependency on GNU make in the 3.3 branch.  Say,
Mark's patch, as long as the bug is fixes is present in the 3.3 branch
as well.  Mark, do you happen to know whether this is the case?  Would
you, as the release manager, consider that patch suitable for adoption
in the branch?

-- 
Alexandre Oliva   Enjoy Guarana', see http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Red Hat GCC Developer                 aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
CS PhD student at IC-Unicamp        oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist                Professional serial bug killer