'make' behavior in FreeBSD-10 ?

[Arthur Chance]

On 24/03/2014 18:36, Assaf Gordon wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On 03/24/2014 02:06 PM, Lowell Gilbert wrote:
>>
>>> I'm trying to track down an issue in compiling 'autotools' packages
>>> that appears in FreeBSD-10 .
>>> (I'm not a frequent FreeBSD user, so it's possible I'm missing
>>> something - any help would be appreciated).
>>
>> Is automake specifically what you're trying to build, or are the other
>> questions relevant as well?
>>
>> This is relevant because it sounds as though you are not trying to use
>> the FreeBSD ports (or pkg; they're really the same thing in terms of
>> what gets installed) system. That's the usual way such a thing would be
>> done, and the exceptions are almost entirely people who would be able to
>> answer such questions for themselves.
>
> I'm trying to build a package that uses autotools+automake, and should
> be built with "./confgure && make".
>
> These issues were detected in an package of mine, and were reproducible
> with the canonical "GNU-Hello" project
> ( https://www.gnu.org/software/hello/ ) .
>
> I'd assume that almost any project that uses "automake" would faces
> these issues.
>
> I am not using "pkg" - under the (wrong?) assumption that a portable
> package written in C and uses "autotools" should be portable enough to
> be compiled on many different OSes.

It would be better to say that a portable package written in C and using 
autotools should be portable enough to be compiled on many different 
distros of Linux and possibly on other systems if they have sufficient 
of the Gnu tools installed.

autotools is a Gnu software suite and presumes a Gnu infrastructure 
including Gnu make. The initial BSD release which was the ancestor of 
all the *BSDs today was six years before Gnu was even announced as a 
concept.

>>
>>> It is my understanding the FreeBSD-10 switched to a different 'make'
>>> (bmake?), which could be the reason for these differences - but I do
>>> not know how to fix them.
>>
>> Gnu Make has never been standard on BSD. Most variations of make
>> programs understand slightly different makefile syntax, so they
>> generally don't run each other's makefiles.
>
> I understand that there are inherent differences.
>
> To rephrase my previous question, to a very narrow technical issue:
> Is there a way to make such a "makefile" complete successfully on FreeBSD:
> ===
> all:
>      non_existing_command ; true
> ===
>
> Or will this construct never work on FreeBSD, and must be changed in
> order to be portable ?
> Because as a whole, it is a valid shell command, which should succeed
> (return exit code 0), according to POSIX (if I understand correctly).
>
>
> Thank you,
>   -gordon