Re: Why does gnulib use makefile rules rather than configure?

[Bruno Haible]

Hi Paul,

> This is a real issue for me because I've always provided a shell
> script, build.sh, which can be used to bootstrap an instance of make if
> the user doesn't already have one.

The information about bootstrapping [1][2] gives a different picture
of bootstrapping. For many packages, nowadays, bootstrapping involves
multiple steps:
  - To bootstrap GCC 9.x, one starts with TinyCC, which is used to build
    GCC 2.95.x, which builds GCC 4.7.4 (including C++ support!), with
    which one can then build GCC 9.x. [3]
  - To bootstrap SBCL, one starts with GNU clisp, which can be used to
    build SBCL. [2]

That is, you don't need a shell script that builds GNU make. People can also
have a shell script that builds another 'make' implementation (a BSD 'make',
or GNU make 4.2.1), and with this 'make' binary you can then build
GNU make, including all possible Automake conditionals, gnulib generated
files and so on.

Yes, it's more effort for the Guix people to build something in 2 steps
rather than in 1 step. But it's surmountable.

Bruno

[1] https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Bootstrapping.html
[2] https://bootstrappable.org/best-practises.html
[3] https://bootstrappable.org/projects/mes.html