Comments on pmake diffs for building on Linux

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On 2008-03-04 15:45, Robert Watson <rwatson at freebsd.org> wrote:
>> The next part, about the missing errx() functions on Solaris is going to
>> be tonight's fun.  If there are too many missing functions, it may be
>> worth adding a static `libcompat' with copies of just the functions we
>> need to run BSD make on non-BSD hosts.
>
> It's beginning to sound like it would be really nice to have an
> autoconf'd/automake'd version of our make to drop onto Linux, Solaris,
> etc, etc, systems in order to bootstrap our compile.

Thanks :)

> I share Warner's reluctance to add autoconf parts to our native build,
> but having 'bsdmake' as a starting point is useful, and would put
> those other platforms more at parity with Mac OS X as a starting point
> (probably ahead due to more accessible native build tools).  I'm a bit
> surprised there isn't already a Linux 'bsdmake' package floating
> around...

There's always `pmake', and the `bmake' that NetBSD uses to bootstrap
itself using their `build.sh' script and a POSIX shell, but there are a
couple of details which may inhibit these from being useful for
bootstrapping FreeBSD.

The `pmake' package of Linux distributions[1] is based on NetBSD make
sources.  While NetBSD make is probably 90% of what we need to bootstrap
FreeBSD, it's still *not* FreeBSD make :/

[1] http://packages.debian.org/etch/pmake

> (When I say 'nice' above, I mean it in the normal autoconf sense of the
> word 'nice', so don't take that the wrong way!)

I lost you there.