On Sat, Jun 25, 2022, 1:48 PM Paul Smith <psm...@gnu.org> wrote: > I'm trying to decide what the future is for GNU make's "build.sh" > bootstrapping script. As you may recall, this script is provided to > allow GNU make to build on systems which don't already have an instance > of make installed. Its goal is to build the first make binary, without > of course all the fancy parts of avoiding rebuilds, generating > dependency files, etc. > > Unfortunately, this really cannot work if GNU make is going to rely on > gnulib, because a MANY gnulib modules require not only autoconf to > work, but also automake. That is, it's not enough to just run configure > and then you get a set of source files and header files that you can > compile by hand by just invoking the compiler. You must ALSO run make, > because the modules provide makefile recipes that invoke sed, etc. to > convert files into their final form. > > I had a discussion about this with the Gnulib maintainers a while ago: > > https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2019-09/msg00041.html > > However the gnulib maintainers were disinclined to modify the practices > of the gnulib modules. > > This leaves me with two options: > > 1. Stop using gnulib, or at least sharply limit the modules we will > include to those with trivial-enough configurations. > 2. Abandon the build.sh script and require an existing make program > in order to build a new version of GNU make. > > #1 is what I followed for GNU make 4.3, which has a limited subset of > carefully-chosen modules. However this becomes harder over time. For > example any module that needs unistd.h requires a very complex automake > rule. > > If #2 is chosen, then a bootstrap process would involve first obtaining > an older version of make, such as GNU make 4.3 or lower, and building > that with its build.sh, then using the resulting make to build the > newer version. >
I realize it's easy to say and pretty obvious but option 2 from a user perspective is sort of horrific. > I'm interested in thoughts about these options. > >
