Richard Stallman wrote: > one GNU package could drop support for ordinary Make, and see > how users react. If the level of complaint is not too high, then > another GNU package could do this. Once many GNU packages have done > this, we might conclude it is ok for all GNU packages to do so > (perhaps with a few exceptions).
Joseph Myers already mentioned GCC. GNU coreutils require GNU make at least on AIX and OSF/1 [1][2]. The need for GNU make is now documented. CLN (not a GNU package) needs GNU make and documents this requirement very prominently in the installation instructions. As far as I can remember, no single user has every complained about it. When I needed to install GNU make on platforms such as AIX and OSF/1, it was done in 5 minutes, because the released tarball has no external dependencies and was well tested. Bruno [1] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2007-02/msg00241.html [2] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/coreutils/2011-09/msg00122.html -- In memoriam Gavriel Holtzberg <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavriel_Holtzberg>
