Re: require GNU make to build emacs?

[Dan Nicolaescu]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:

  > > From: Dan Nicolaescu <address@hidden>
  > > Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2008 15:44:43 -0800
  > > 
  > > Shouldn't we require GNU make to build emacs?
  > 
  > Requesting a specific flavor of Make is a limitation and a burden on
  > users who build Emacs, and as such, we shouldn't impose it without a
  > good reason, IMO.  Is there a good reason for that?

Not sure if we should be discussing this given that Stefan already said
"not now", but ... 
Yes, IMO there's a good reason.  Being able to use conditionals,
includes, and other advanced features should allow us to avoid using the
C preprocessor to create Makefiles, and to make the bootstrap a bit more
reliable (we have way too many parallel make failures and other
flakiness).


  > > Having a modern make should help simplify the makefiles and maybe the
  > > whole build process.
  > 
  > Is that the only reason, or are there real problems with non-GNU Make
  > in our build process?

The fact that we only use the most basic make features is a problem.