Re: Goodbye to GNU make's "build.sh" ... ?

[Paul Smith]

On Sun, 2022-06-26 at 02:14 +0200, Henrik Carlqvist wrote:
> Would  this "old version of make" have to be GNU make?

It would need to be some version of make that is supported by automake.

As far as I'm aware, automake-generated makefiles are currently
intended to run with any POSIX-compliant version of make; I believe
that BSD make qualifies.  Certainly SunPro make from the late Jörg
Shilling would qualify, but I believe it requires a pre-existing make
to build (I haven't tried in quite a while).  And now that we've lost
him I'm not sure who will take up maintenance of that project.

Also, I've heard calls for automake maintainers to simplify the
generated makefiles by assuming GNU make and taking advantage of GNU
make features: then we really WOULD be in a quandary.  But I have no
idea how likely such a thing is to happen.

> The scary part of relying on an old version of some software is that
> old versions sometimes suffer from bit rot caused by changes in
> language standards or API changes in libraries.

Indeed.

> Maybe we would have to rely on cross compiling GNU make for new
> systems?

Another solution, to be sure.