Re: Gnulib on Windows (native / mingw32) / VMS / etc.

[Bruno Haible]

Hi Paul,

> > You really want to reduce the number of redundant Makefiles you have
> > to maintain to 1, as soon as possible.
> 
> The only makefiles the GNU make distribution will support will be
> standard make makefiles.  The model is:
> 
> If you have a configure-capable system, use autotools to compile GNU
> make.
> 
> If you don't have a configure-capable system, use the provided
> bootstrap script (or create your own) to build GNU make.
> 
> The build of GNU make is straightforward enough that using a script
> isn't a big problem.

Using a script to compile the various .c files files in turn is easy.

The problem is to maintain the config.h file, if you don't want to
assume a configure-capable system.

> My position continues to be that the build of GNU make on Windows (or
> other environments) needs to be possible with only native tools: on
> Windows this means command.com and a C compiler.  No Cygwin, no MSYS,
> no bash, no sed, no grep, and obviously no make (since that's what
> we're trying to build).

What are the reasons for this position?

- You want users of Windows ME (from 2000) to be able to build 'make'?

- You want the process of building 'make' from source to be as simple
  as possible, the least effort for the person who does it?

- You care about reproducible builds and bootstrapping, as in [1]?

- Other?

Bruno

[1] https://reproducible-builds.org/events/athens2015/bootstrapping/