On 13 Jan 2023 16:01, Karl Berry wrote: > I am doubtful about blithely defining .POSIX unconditionally. I feel > sure that will break existing Makefiles. I don't think we should do that. > > Detecting .POSIX in an existing Makefile.am and moving it to the front > sounds desirable, since that is clearly what the developer intended. > > Another (not mutually exclusive) possibility is to add an Automake > option (say, "make-posix") that outputs the .POSIX line. --thanks, karl.
i'd be amenable to a `no-make-posix` option, but imo forcing people to opt-in to the right behavior is the wrong mental model. i'm also a bit skeptical of the idea that we're breaking makefiles. if an implementation is POSIX compliant, then it already behaves as POSIX defines make. as it stands now, we, and our users, are generating files that target an undefined standard that no one agrees on, cannot be tested or asserted, and maybe they happen to work on the developer's desktop, but not on random users of their own. by defining .POSIX, we turn the state from "usually works, but sometimes fails" to "either works or fails, but it's the same everywhere". i grok that not everyone is POSIX-compliant, and we sometimes try to add support for such systems where reasonable, but that's a case-by-case, and we can't keep bending over backwards to support decades old dead software that no one uses. -mike
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature