(https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/make/manual/html_node/Utilities-in-Makefiles.html)
Where does that list come from? Most probobly from the common tools that are required/used by GNU Automake generated Makefiles. If it's about portability to very old systems (like the next warning about "mkdir -p" suggests), then "printf" should probably not be there (it was added to that list in 2010 without much of a justification: http://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/gnustandards/gnustandards/make-stds.texi?view=log#rev1.58 Why are commands like basename, dirname, comm, find, wc, tee, uniq that have little changed since Unix v7 not included? I don't think anyone has tried to make an exhaustive list of the commands, so most probobly that is the reason.
