what is special about the 'git' Makefile ?

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:33:03 -0700 (PDT), George Sanders <gosand1982 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I've been doing this dance:
>
> ../configure ; make ; make install
>
> for about ten years now.  Sometimes there are some little issues, but nothing too crazy.
>
> I tried to build 'git' from source today, however, and it doesn't
> behave like anything I've ever seen...
>
> I do the ./configure and it completes without errors:
>
> checking for mkstemps... yes
> checking for library containing mkstemps... none required
> checking Checking for POSIX Threads with '-pthread'... yes
> configure: creating ./config.status
> config.status: creating config.mak.autogen
>
> and then run 'make' ...
>
> "Makefile", line 206: Need an operator
> "Makefile", line 244: Missing dependency operator
...
> So ... what in the world is going on here ?

Try using GNU make:

    ./configure && gmake

The devel/git port includes `USE_GMAKE=yes', so I'm guessing the port
maintainer discovered that the makefiles of Git use gmake-specific
constructs and added it to the port makefile for a good reason.