[holsta]

> A couple make flags that are useful [..]

But not portable. Please don't use them outside of your own non-distributable toy projects.

[deng]

I will not restrict myself to an arcane subset of Make just because you refuse to type 'gmake' instead of 'make'. Parallel execution, pattern rules, order-only prerequisites, includes, not to mention the dozens of useful function like (not)dir, (pat)subst, info... There's a reason why most POSIX Makefiles nowadays are generated. It's not GNU's fault that POSIX is stale.

EDIT: There's one exception, and that would be using Guile as an extension language, as that is often not available. However, thanks to conditionals (also not in POSIX, of course), it can be used optionally. I once sped up a Windows build by an order of magnitude by implementing certain things in Guile instead of calling shell (which is notoriously slow on Windows).

[Tor3]

Agreed. My company decided on using GNU Make on every platform we supported, which back then (last century) was a bunch of Unix variants, and Linux. That made it possible to write a simple and portable build system which could be used for everything we did, no hassle. And not difficult, because gmake was available basically everywhere, then just as now.

[matheusmoreira]

Completely agree. POSIX is irrelevant anyway. Every single unixlike has unique features that are vastly superior to whatever legacy happens to be standardized by POSIX. Avoiding their use leads to nothing but misery.

[matheusmoreira]

Portability is overrated. Better to make full use of one's tools. Restricting oneself to some "portable" subset of all features is pure masochism.

GNU Make is feature rich and is itself portable. It's also free software, as in freedom. Just use it.

[Tor3]

And it's available everywhere. All Unix platforms had it back then, and the still existing ones (AIX is alive, at least) have it available. Which made it easy for our company to base our build system on GNU Make for everything, back in the day.

[holsta]

> Portability is overrated. > GNU Make is [..] itself portable.

Sounds like it's not overrated, then. You just prefer that other people write portable C and package GNU Make for all systems instead of you writing POSIX Make.

[f1shy]

Not only overrated, but also the source of extreme complex and gigantic pieces of software, which end being a nightmare to keep updated.

Just like optimization, it has its place and time.

[immibis]

Unless you are actually targeting all of those platforms, of course. Which you're not.

[signa11]

exactly ! instead of writing portable Makefiles, use portable make !

[stabbles]

The guide is basically about GNU Make, and the flags are obviously just for end users to invoke make.

[f1shy]

Not every project has to be a multi-platform, multi-os, multi-language monster. It is perfectly fine to target a specific set of architecture, os, etc. And I find insulting and silly calling it a “toy project”

[nrclark]

Agreed if you're looking at it through the lens of portable software that you plan to distribute. Automake generates portable Makefiles for a reason.

But there's another huge category: people who are automating something that's not open-source. Maybe it stays within the walls of their company, where it's totally fine to say "build machines will always be Ubuntu" or whatever other environment their company prefers.

GNU Make has a ton of powerful features, and it makes sense to take advantage of them if you know that GNU Make will always be the one you use.