what is special about the 'git' Makefile ?

[George Sanders]

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
"Makefile", line 247: Need an operator
"Makefile", line 250: Need an operator
"Makefile", line 273: Need an operator
"Makefile", line 286: Need an operator
"Makefile", line 395: Need an operator

(snip about 8 or 10 PAGES of the above)

"Makefile", line 1293: Need an operator
"Makefile", line 1294: warning: duplicate script for target "ifdef" ignored
"Makefile", line 1295: warning: duplicate script for target "ifdef" ignored
"Makefile", line 1296: Need an operator
"Makefile", line 1298: Need an operator
"Makefile", line 1301: Need an operator
"Makefile", line 1303: Missing dependency operator
"Makefile", line 1305: Need an operator
"Makefile", line 1307: Missing dependency operator
"Makefile", line 1309: Need an operator
Error expanding embedded variable.


So ... what in the world is going on here ?