On Tue, 22 Nov 2011, Stefano Lattarini wrote:
Or simpler: So far, automake has not been using gmake, so why should it
now start doing so?
Because IMHO the cost/benefit ratio of using portable make only has become
higher and higer -- not because the cost of writing portable Makefiles has
increased, rather because the the benefits of doing so have stadily
decreased over time, thanks to the "rise" of GNU/Linux and, considerably
less, of Cygwin (rise which has had as a consequence that fact that their
versions of the standard tools have become more widespread and easily
available).
Empires come and go. Regardless, there is no reason for other
perfectly good systems to throw in the towel just yet.
The problem that Automake still needs to solve is enable the easy
construction of reliable build systems for large projects with many
build products and source files occupying a large directory tree.
Relying on GNU make may make accomplishing this easier, but it does
not solve the Talking Heads "How Did I Get Here" problem we are in
now. The GNU build system has ended up where it is today based on
refinements to approaches and build tools invented in the late '70s
and early '80s. Even autoconf dates from the early '90s.
A build system which requires one or more processes to entirely
orchestrate the build order and rules based on mere file existence and
simple timestamps is fundamentally broken. Currently observed
problems will only grow worse.
Bob
--
Bob Friesenhahn
bfrie...@simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer, http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/
