Re: Gnu Make operating conditions

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2014 18:45:29 +0530
> From: chandrababu nallani <address@hidden>
> 
> I am using Gnu Make 3.80 on windows.

That is an old and buggy version of Make.  It has a couple of
Windows-specific bugs fixed in version 3.81 and later.  So I suggest
to use Make 3.82.  (The last version of Make is 4.0, but it is not yet
as stable as 3.82.)

>    1. Assume the Gnu Make tool depends on the environment variable <X>,
>    which is set on installation of the tool. The user does not know this and
>    has accidently redefined <X> to another value.

GNU Make does not need any environment variables for its work.

>    2. Assume the Gnu Make depends on some dlls from the operating system or
>    other extensions, e.g. service packs or .NET packages. What happens if
>    these dll files are accidently replaced by other versions. Does the tool
>    recognize this, e.g. by checking if the correct versions of expected dlls
>    are present?

GNU Make doesn't depend on any DLLs that can be removed from a Windows
system without rendering that system completely unusable.  There are
no issues with versions of those DLLs, because the same DLLs are used
by the OS itself all the time.

>    3. Assume that the Gnu Make depends on some entries to the windows
>    registry, which are set on installation of the tool. The user has installed
>    other tools, e.g. other versions of the same tool, or done something else,
>    so that these registry values have changed to other values.

GNU Make does not access or need any registry entries.

>    4. Assume that somebody has accidently deleted some files from the Gnu
>    Make installation directory, or the installation has not completed.

GNU Make installation is a single executable (and a couple of
documentation files), so this can hardly happen.

>    5. Assume that two instances of the Gnu Make are executed on the same
>    windows session at the same time. Are both instances running completely
>    independently? Is it possible that both instances write/read data, e.g.
>    temporary files, to/from the same resource?

Temporary files are written to the temporary directory, but the names
of those files are computed dynamically so as not to conflict with
existing files.

>    6. Assume the Gnu Make is executed in a situation where the CPU is very
>    busy with executing other programs. Hence, the execution of the tool gets
>    interrupted extremely often. Can this situation cause deviations in the
>    tool’s outputs?

No.  GNU Make is a single-threaded program.

>    7. Assume the Gnu Make is executed in a situation where the available
>    RAM becomes lower than specified in the minimal system requirements. Can
>    this situation cause deviations in the tool’s outputs?

If there's not enough virtual memory for Make to create its data
structures, you will get a fatal error message and Make will abort.
But you need to have extremely memory-tight conditions and/or a very
large build, for this to happen.