> From: Paul Smith <psm...@gnu.org> > Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2012 17:53:25 -0500 > Reply-To: psm...@gnu.org > > Going through the content of GNU make sources recently it occurs to me > we have a LOT of ways to build GNU make. Maybe at one time or another > all these different ways were necessary but I wonder if they still are. > Can't we reduce them somewhat? > > For ways to build GNU make we have: > > 1. Standard configure/Makefile.am > 2. build.sh > 3. Makefile.DOS > 4. NMakefile > 5. SMakefile > 6. build_w32.bat > 7. Makefile.ami > 8. makefile.vms > 9. makefile.com > 10. dosbuild.bat > 11. make_msvc_net2001.vcproj > > I understand that for many of these we may need them: ways to build VMS > vs. Amiga vs. DOS may not be portable. > > But do we really need both dosbuild.bat AND build_w32.bat?
They are for 2 different ports: dosbuild.bat for the MS-DOS (a.k.a. DJGPP) port, build_w32.bat for the MS-Windows port. If what you mean is collapse them into a single batch file, then it could be possible, but is it worth the hassle? They are typically maintained by different people. > Do we really need NMakefile AND SMakefile AND Makefile.DOS? NMakefile is for building the MS-Windows port with nmake, the Microsoft's make program. Given that build_w32.bat exists, we could remove it (and the same goes for the make_msvc_* files). Makefile.DOS in conjunction with configure.bat and configh.dos are for building the MS-DOS port when there's already a previous version of Make; see below. SMakefile is for something called `smake' which seems to be from some old Posix platform, so I don't know anything about it. > The contents of these files don't seem so different to me that they > couldn't be consolidated, perhaps with some command-line overrides > or similar. Or, maybe some of them are just not needed; do we > really have to be able to build with nmake and smake? How about moving them to a subdirectory, where they could bit-rot out of sight? > Looking at it another way, for the non-configure-based systems isn't a > batch file enough, just to get GNU make built the first time, then you > can use GNU make itself to build afterwards? Once you build Make with the batch file, how do you rebuild it, if you cannot run the configure script? You need a Makefile, don't you? Makefile.DOS is such a Makefile for DOS; the MS-Windows port doesn't have such a Makefile suitable for GNU Make, so one keeps running build_w32.bat to rebuild. > Just wondering if we can't do a bit of cleanup here... Maybe moving most of them (everything except the build* batch files) out of sight is good enough? _______________________________________________ Bug-make mailing list Bug-make@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-make
