Re: [PATCH 3/4] configure: Prefer gmake on darwin

[Peter Maydell]

On Mon, 24 Aug 2020 at 15:51, Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> On 8/22/20 4:21 PM, Roman Bolshakov wrote:
> > New meson/make build requires GNU make 3.82+ but macOS ships 3.81 even
> > on Big Sur while homebrew provides GNU make 4.3 as 'gmake' in $PATH.
>
> Does this line up with our development policies on supported platforms?
> Should we be fixing the creation of Makefile.ninja to avoid constructs
> not understood by older GNU make, if that is what is shipped out of the
> box on MacOS as one of our supported platforms?  Or is MacOS on the
> fringe for what counts as supported, where we are okay mandating that
> users must install a separate newer GNU make than what comes by default?

If it's easy to add back support for make 3.81 that would be the
nicest thing, I think. But we already require the user to install
a non-system python, for instance, so asking them to also install
make from homebrew isn't a completely new thing. (The only awkward
thing is that homebrew doesn't actually put the new make on the
path as 'make', only as 'gmake', so you have to then manually
fiddle the PATH.) At some point requiring some tools from homebrew
or similar for QEMU compilation is just inevitable given
Apple's apparent policy of never moving the system versions of
tools beyond the last GPLv2 version.

thanks
-- PMM