Re: GNU make 4.2.90 release candidate available

[Paul Smith]

On Thu, 2019-09-05 at 02:17 -0400, Dennis Clarke wrote:
> > So, it is not useless to test building with all improvements turned off
> > because it lets us know whether our attempts to support very old
> > environments are still working properly.
> > 
> > But I would not recommend using such options when trying to compile an
> > actual, useful GNU make for everyday use, as it will be full of
> > workarounds and hacks and won't take advantage of modern POSIX features
> > which give better behavior and performance.
> 
> Well I have older systems to run and work with and so the software needs
> to work there. Period.  Unless some statement is made that says "GNU
> Make will no longer be supported on these platforms ..." which is the
> approach that the GCC folks take.

I think I wasn't clear.  I'm not saying GNU make should not work on
older systems; in fact we try to support more systems and more out-of-
date systems than most GNU software.

What I'm saying is that when building GNU software it's best to run the
configure and make without any special C flags etc.  Allow configure to
detect the capabilities of your actual system and maximize their usage
as it can.  That's what configure is for.

Artificially restricting the facilities the software can use by adding
options to the compiler to force older versions of the C standard or
limited POSIX support, is only a good idea if you're trying to verify
that it would build on older systems when you don't have the actual
older systems to test on, so you try to fake it through compiler flags.