[tex-k] [tex-live] make = gmake?

[gnwiii at gmail.com]

On 7/28/06, Martin Schröder <martin at oneiros.de> wrote:
> TeXlive already needs gmake because of freetype2, i.e. XeTeX:
> This on a stock OpenBSD 3.9

I've been using bash and gmake to build TeX binaries on SGI Irix 6.5
since at least teTeX-3.
Pdftex 1.40beta--20060725 builds using SGI's compilers (but there
hasn't been time for proper tests).  I did try building
pdftex-1.40beta last winter on a system that had only the standard SGI
tools.  There were "don't know how to make xxx" issues that are not
hard to get around (using a successful linux compile for comparison)
but the binaries didn't work due to a known bug in one of the
compilers (the same inertia that prevents installing GNU tools also
results in systems going years between upgrades or patches).  In the
past, tetex's configure has needed bash, and there have been problems
with awk, sed, cp, compilers other than gcc, etc.

Someone working on linux can't be expected to keep track of every
idiosyncracy of "legacy" systems, much less work around bugs for which
patches are available.   Users of legacy systems should expect extra
work, either to install GNU tools or to provide portable code.

-- 
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia