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

[Warren Young]

On 11/22/2011 11:18 AM, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> is gmake stable enough or is gmake just another moving target
> just like many other GNU-programs?

If you go back just three versions, you've gone back in time ~9 years.

That is about the length of time that GNU make has been the default 
implementation of make everywhere but the BSDs, so if this hypothetical 
rewrite happened, I think you could safely depend only on what's 
available in GNU make 3.80.

The past two releases have had some backwards-incompatible changes, but 
they're all by way of fixing obscure corner cases that are easy to stay 
away from.  Looking at the changes, I can't say I'd want them to have 
kept the old behavior just for compatibility sake.

For example, see the "Pattern search changes" section of this article:

    http://www.electric-cloud.com/blog/2010/08/03/gnu-make-3-82-is-out/

As long as this hypothetical rewrite used GNU make in standard ways, I 
don't see that it's likely to get caught by future changes.  I don't 
think I've ever had a GNUmakefile fail to work after upgrading GNU make.