Re: No progress output when make 4.4.1 builds Linux 4.19 and earlier

[Paul Smith]

On Wed, 2023-03-08 at 08:12 -0500, Dmitry Goncharov wrote:
> > > Is this an intentional breakage from the 'make' side?
> No it is not an intentional breakage.
> This is a fix for https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?63347.

Just to note, it was possible to run into this problem with earlier
versions of GNU Make as well, it just became much simpler once the
variables were available since it's easier to have an "s" in some
variable.  But it is possible to have an "s" in a MAKEFLAGS flag which
is not introduced with a "--", and doesn't represent the short option.

I give some examples in that Savannah bug.

> > The fact that kernels 5.4 and newer imply to me that there is
> > a kernel build fix that should resolve this if someone can take the
> > time to bisect it...
> 
> Kernel makefile was updated to work with old and new make in
> 4bf73588165ba7d32131a043775557a54b6e1db5.
> If you wanted to backport, try this commit.

Does anyone know why this commit is using a make version comparison? 
That seems totally unnecessary to me; am I forgetting something?  As
far as I remember,

    silence := $(findstring s,$(firstword -$(MAKEFLAGS)))

has always been the proper way to check for the short option "s", and
has always worked in every version of GNU Make.

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/4bf73588165ba7d32131a043775557a54b6e1db5