Re: Could automake-generated Makefiles required GNU make? (was: Re: [gnu-prog-discuss] portability)

[Richard Stallman]

      1. We start requiring GNU make in an "experimental" automake 2.0
         development line (which might, and will, break whathever
         backward-compatibility gets in its way).

If we want to experiment with this, we should not do so in Automake!

Rather, 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).

Then we could deprecate use of Automake to make ordinary makefiles.
Later we could remove that support from Automake.

This is a slow, cautious process -- the way it should be.

    > Maybe in the discussion we should distinguish GNU-like systems
    > (perhaps including Mac OS)
    >
    Do you mean POSIX-like systems?

I mean GNU-like.  GNU is our main target, but if another system is
similar enough to GNU, support for it is not much extra work.
-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
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