Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2003 11:28:13 -0800 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Timothy Beyer <beyert@cs.ucr.edu> Cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: which make in freebsd? Message-ID: <3FA6AC4D.81024BD4@mindspring.com> References: <20031102010136.44997855.beyert@cs.ucr.edu>
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Timothy Beyer wrote: > Hi, I was curious, which of the dozens of make programs does FreeBSD use? Internally, just "make" (BSD make). In X11, imake, xmkmf, etc.. In ports, it varies; sometimes make, sometimes GNU make, etc.. > So far I'm guessing that its imake or pmake, but is it something else? Is there > really a generic bsd 'make' program? Yes. Yes. > On another note, what make do you (as in everyone on the list) prefer, and > why? BSD make. You can .include rules, so your Makefile's end up being only a few lines, instead of being large. > I've heard lots of people complain that XFree doesn't use gmake, but I just > don't see whats wrong with imake... Of course, all the people who were > complaining were Linux users, but this made me curious if there are really > some distinguishing features of the gmake that set it above the rest... Or > were they just biased? They're not just biased; mostly, they are idiots. 8-). The reason for this is that imake encapsulates the dependencies properly, and the code is portable, whereas GNU make/automake/configure/etc. put the onus on the software. Over time, programs that use these tools to build become less and less portable. So using these programs is a form of Linux advocacy. For a while, Amancio Hasty "rode herd" on several projects that kept becoming non-portable to FreeBSD because of Linux advocacates adding code that would not compile on any platform but Linux. The imake program uses platform feature tests, and then compiles the code with feature declaration macrois in scope, so the code remains portable. -- Terry
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