Re: Idea of triggering bugs in users' Makefiles

[Paul Smith]

On Fri, 2022-02-04 at 09:13 +0000, Sergei Trofimovich wrote:
> 1. Enable parallel builds by GNU make by default
> 
> 2. Do not run dependencies in deterministic order by default:

GNU make (unlike Ninja) is bound by the POSIX standard in terms of its
behaviors.  The POSIX standard makes very clear the way in which make
operates on prerequisites and neither of these changes are conforming
to the standard.

So, it's not possible to modify the default behavior of GNU make in
these  ways.  Not to mention that GNU make is also a foundational
component of hundreds of thousands of build systems and changes that
would cause a large number of them to break isn't acceptable, even in
pursuit of a good cause.

The idea of having a non-deterministic order of prerequisite builds is
something others have suggested but no one has implemented.  Of course
it would not be possible to move the first prerequisite as that one is
special but randomly rearranging the rest of them could be done.  This
would require an option to enable of course; it could not be the
default behavior.