Documenting tools necessary for GCC [draft]

[Geert Bosch]

On Saturday, May 31, 2003, at 17:25 America/New_York, Alexandre Oliva 
wrote:
> Anyway, until we have a patch that actually introduces requirements on
> GNU make, and that is clearly worth such a requirement, there's no
> point in enforcing the use of GNU make.

One of the concrete issues that came up is the ability to use
include files. The feature is available in most makes, but with
different and incompatible syntax. Standardizing on a single make
(regardless of the actual choice) would allow usage of the feature.

Another issue that we found with the GNAT front end, is that with
the extra GNU make features one doesn't need to rely as much on shell
capabilities. In our experience, using GNU make features was more
portable than relying on shell features across platforms.

Personally, I have found it tremendously helpful to be able to go
to one manual to find all constructs documented. Having the language
used for Makefiles specified as the least common denominator of 
languages
accepted by an open-ended set of "compatible" make utilities is a real
problem.

Requiring a specific version of make gives us instant documentation of
what may be used in the GCC makefiles.

   -Geert