Bootstrap failure: objdir=srcdir, FreeBSD make

[Richard Earnshaw]

mark@codesourcery.com said:
> I would far prefer that we require GNU make.  In practice, we run into
> problems with non-GNU makes, and there are lots of places where
> extensions in GNU make would be very handy.  At this point, GNU make
> runs on most systems of interest, including BSD, Windows, GNU/Linux,
> HPUX, AIX, IRIX, Solaris and probably others. 

> I believe that the rationale has been that users shouldn't have to
> build GNU make before installing GCC.  For one thing, building GNU
> make would be hard without a C compiler.  However, building GCC is
> hard without a C compiler, too, and IIRC GNU make doesn't require GCC
> to build.   

This argument only makes sense if the GNU make maintainers are prepared to 
commit to GNU make always building with a K&R compiler (more specifically, 
that their code will never rely on GCCisms.  Otherwise we end up in a loop 
where one can't build either tool on a virgin system until the other is 
built.

R.