Re: PATCH: Use GNU Makeisms to simplify libgcc build

[Mark Mitchell <mark at codesourcery dot com>]

On Thu, 2003-08-28 at 16:48, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> On Aug 28, 2003, law@redhat.com wrote:
> 
> > Assuming gnu-make allows us to replace some of those rather fragile bits
> > with bits that make sense and are a hell of a lot easier to understand.
> 
> I still want to know what caused the problem in this case.  I'd still
> rather pass things explicitly, rather than force GNU make down
> everybody's throat.  If we eventually find out that we do have a good
> reason to really require GNU make, fine.  This is not it.
> Unfortunately I wasn't invited to participate in the discussion of why
> GCC should or should not require GNU make, so I don't know what the

For the record, you were asked -- by me, at the SC's behest, after a
13-0-1 vote in favor of GNU make -- if you objected.

I asked you that on August 17th.  You did not reply until today.

I waited until August 26th to make the announcement.

> arguments were, but the one reason I heard the most since the decision
> was reached was the `include' feature, which makes me thing the SC may
> not have been misguided about the available options.

There does not need to be any single feature.  

There are *lots* of good features in GNU make, but the most important
one is that it behaves in the same way on all platforms.

You are of course free to propose any patches, including ones to remove
GNU makeisms.  However, those patches -- like any others to the build
system -- should be judged on whether or not they improve the
maintainability of the build system, not whether or not they add or
remove GNU make dependencies.

If, for example, you would like to use automake, by all means suggest a
patch.  And if we get to the point where using automake cleans
everything up so nicely that it's no longer a problem to support lots of
makes, we could stop requiring GNU make.  But we have over 10,000 lines
of Makefiles under gcc right now, and, quite simply, that's ridiculous. 
Using GNU make will let us shrink that considerably.

-- 
Mark Mitchell
CodeSourcery, LLC
mark@codesourcery.com