Why basename in make is defined differently from basename from coreutils?

[Peng Yu]

Hi,

coreutils has very commonly used linux utilities. People probably know
some commands from coreutiles much earlier than knowing GNU Make. I
feel that it is inconvenient and confusing that make define a set
(like basename) of similar but different commands from coreutils.
Every time I use these commands in Make, I'll have to look up the
manual.

I don't quite know the history of make on these commands and for what
reason these command are defined as they are right now. But I'm feel
that probably it is better to change the definition of these commands
so that they are consistent with coreutils. In case that people worry
about the backward compatibility issues, these new definitions can be
supported by specifying a command line option to GNU Make. As time
passes by, this command line option can become the default and
eventually the old definition of these commands can be removed from
GNU Make.

-- 
Regards,
Peng