Re: iconv_open: doesn't handle NetBSD bmake

[Bruno Haible]

Hi Simon,

Simon Josefsson wrote:
> Hi.  I tried building libidn using 'bmake' from Debian which labels
> itself as NetBSD make and got this error message:
> 
> bmake: don't know how to make iconv_open-aix.h. Stop
> ...
> I naively suggest the patch below (which makes bmake happy), but I may
> be missing something from how this is intended to work.  Ideas?

You can see from the git history of this file that this syntax was
introduced in commit bf9412ab2e5878f2b64c8ba5d496d7a26ac4d374
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2017-08/msg00111.html .

I regularly build Gnulib testdirs on NetBSD with NetBSD's /usr/bin/make:

  rm -rf build
  mkdir build
  cd build
  $HOME/configure "$@" 2>&1 | tee log1 \
  && make 2>&1 | tee log2 \
  && make check 2>&1 | tee log3

and have not encountered the need to use a better 'make' program
(such as GNU make) on this platform.

My conclusion is: The 'bmake' program that you tried is inferior
to what NetBSD is using, and since on GNU systems we have GNU make,
there is no need to support or even try another 'make' program.

Bruno