Re: Please don't drop support for AmigaOS

[Paul Smith]

On Thu, 2022-11-03 at 10:36 +0100, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> I just read the release announcement for GNU Make 4.4 that deprecated
> support for AmigaOS.
> 
> Since AmigaOS is still being actively developed and deployed, I would
> like to ask for AmigaOS support to remain part of GNU Make.
> 
> The latest major release of AmigaOS, 3.2, was just released last year
> [2]. An update to 3.2.1 was released December 2021 [3].

It's apparent someone posted a note to some AmigaOS mailing list, based
on the number of emails we got this morning :).

While it's good that AmigaOS as an operating system is still under
active development, what I care about is whether anyone is maintaining
*GNU make* on AmigaOS.

I have not received a single patch for an AmigaOS problem with GNU make
since 1996.  I haven't received a single response from anyone on
AmigaOS to any request for anyone to test a release candidate, or a new
release, in I don't know how many releases.

What version of GNU make is currently being provided on AmigaOS?

Maybe it's possible that all the changes to GNU make in the last 26
years have magically "just worked" on AmigaOS so there has been no need
for anyone to communicate with us about it, but I find it unlikely.

It seems more likely that AmigaOS is shipping some very old version of
GNU make and has no interest in updating to a newer version.  And if
that's the case, that's absolutely fine!  Those old releases of GNU
make are not going anywhere and will continue to work just as they
always have!

But if AmigaOS is not updating to newer versions of GNU make, then I
don't want to maintain the (not insignificant amount of) special-case
code currently existing to (not really) support it, in future releases.


Fundamentally, for non-traditional operating systems it's not enough to
just ask for it to be maintained.  Someone has to volunteer to actively
participate in the maintenance effort.

Cheers!