Required Make version

Hello,

people familiar with the PHP *nix build system today can be probably
counted on the fingers of two hands, so I'm hoping to get some answer
also here.

Does anyone maybe still have any insights on which Make version does
PHP require or silently specify as a minimum? GNU make? POSIX make?
Maybe some GNU make minimum version? 3.81? etc...

Currently, there are two steps where different make can be used:

1.) ./buildconf
(here GNU make is required because of using the conditional macro
assignment operator ?= in build/build2.mk file)

2.) make step after ./configure
(here POSIX make can go through more or less ok).

This is seen, for example, on the Solaris systems where doing this:

./buildconf

causes:

make: Fatal error in reader: build/build.mk, line 22: Badly formed

macro assignment

so, this needs to be done:

MAKE=gmake ./buildconf

however, this works then ok:

./configure
make

Is this confirmed and ok with everyone that GNU make is the minimum
required derivative for PHP to be used? Or should software such as PHP
be an example and use POSIX compatible make?

Reason for asking this: https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/4025 and
similar improvements...

Thank you.

--
Peter Kokot

Hello,

people familiar with the PHP *nix build system today can be probably
counted on the fingers of two hands, so I'm hoping to get some answer
also here.

Does anyone maybe still have any insights on which Make version does
PHP require or silently specify as a minimum? GNU make? POSIX make?
Maybe some GNU make minimum version? 3.81? etc...

Currently, there are two steps where different make can be used:

1.) ./buildconf
(here GNU make is required because of using the conditional macro
assignment operator ?= in build/build2.mk file)

2.) make step after ./configure
(here POSIX make can go through more or less ok).

This is seen, for example, on the Solaris systems where doing this:

./buildconf

causes:

make: Fatal error in reader: build/build.mk, line 22: Badly formed

macro assignment

so, this needs to be done:

MAKE=gmake ./buildconf

however, this works then ok:

./configure
make

Is this confirmed and ok with everyone that GNU make is the minimum
required derivative for PHP to be used? Or should software such as PHP
be an example and use POSIX compatible make?

Reason for asking this: https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/4025 and
similar improvements...

Relying upon a single build feature set simplifies development, and GNU
make is ubiquitous. I am in favor of standardizing on GNU make.

The fact that few people know the autotools mechanism we're using, and that
GNU make probably isn't the most performant build system for us 1,
suggests an interesting project: integrating an alternative build systems.
Like X.org attempted 2 with Meson 3. It might not yield any fruit, but
that'd validate the system we're using.

bishop

If we change anything about our build system, I think it ought to be
switching to CMake instead. This supports multiple backends, including
generating project files for IDEs, and is designed to be portable,
instead of targeting only GNU systems. This means we can use a single
build system instead of one for Windows and one for everyone else. At
one point, there was a Google Summer of Code project that began this
work, but it never got merged and I couldn't find any discussion about
why.

I'd be happy to work help with the CMake port, as I know it a decent
bit, but I don't have enough time to champion the whole thing.

Hello,

people familiar with the PHP *nix build system today can be probably
counted on the fingers of two hands, so I'm hoping to get some answer
also here.

Does anyone maybe still have any insights on which Make version does
PHP require or silently specify as a minimum? GNU make? POSIX make?
Maybe some GNU make minimum version? 3.81? etc...

Currently, there are two steps where different make can be used:

1.) ./buildconf
(here GNU make is required because of using the conditional macro
assignment operator ?= in build/build2.mk file)

2.) make step after ./configure
(here POSIX make can go through more or less ok).

This is seen, for example, on the Solaris systems where doing this:

./buildconf

causes:

make: Fatal error in reader: build/build.mk, line 22: Badly formed

macro assignment

so, this needs to be done:

MAKE=gmake ./buildconf

however, this works then ok:

./configure
make

Is this confirmed and ok with everyone that GNU make is the minimum
required derivative for PHP to be used? Or should software such as PHP
be an example and use POSIX compatible make?

Reason for asking this: https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/4025 and
similar improvements...

Relying upon a single build feature set simplifies development, and GNU
make is ubiquitous. I am in favor of standardizing on GNU make.

The fact that few people know the autotools mechanism we're using, and that
GNU make probably isn't the most performant build system for us 1,
suggests an interesting project: integrating an alternative build systems.
Like X.org attempted 2 with Meson 3. It might not yield any fruit, but
that'd validate the system we're using.

bishop

 
I'd be happy to work help with the CMake port, as I know it a decent
bit, but I don't have enough time to champion the whole thing.

That has been done ages ago:
http://svn.php.net/viewvc/php/cmake/

Back then it didn't have any uptake because it was uncommon and people
don't like to change. (and maybe some technical reasons where some
hidden sauce in PHP's build system allows some magic)

A key factor for PHP's build system (imo) back the was that PHP's
incremental build was a lot faster (typical development cycle: touch
a single file and type "make") than CMake (while CMake+make is more
correct since it also checks touched headers) nowadays we have SSDs,
which makes this a bit less of an issue, and CMake supports ninja,
which eventually might be faster.

johannes

Hello,

I'd be happy to work help with the CMake port, as I know it a decent
bit, but I don't have enough time to champion the whole thing.

That has been done ages ago:
http://svn.php.net/viewvc/php/cmake/

Back then it didn't have any uptake because it was uncommon and people
don't like to change. (and maybe some technical reasons where some
hidden sauce in PHP's build system allows some magic)

A key factor for PHP's build system (imo) back the was that PHP's
incremental build was a lot faster (typical development cycle: touch
a single file and type "make") than CMake (while CMake+make is more
correct since it also checks touched headers) nowadays we have SSDs,
which makes this a bit less of an issue, and CMake supports ninja,
which eventually might be faster.

johannes

Thanks everyone for their time to write answers here. Basically, the
make supports more implementations besides only GNU. This has been
resolved in a very simplistic way.

About the CMake I'll check it out for sure more... The *nix build
system has been now so much cleaned that adding CMake buildsystem
beside the autotools and windows one could be done nicely I think. A
bit more cleaning should be done of that implementation in the SVN
example. Like adding less files in the project root directory and
every single src folder out there, removing outdated things, adding
new things and fine tunings etc... But yes, quite modern looking thing
with at least active development behind compared to Autoconf stuff and
non standard windows build system without much docs...

Only concern here is PHP's openness to change and accept the change.
I've noticed that so many things here can't be changed actually that
it is becoming a deal breaker to fix things and mover this forward. To
invest one's free time in improving something that in the end
internals people will change according to what they think should be
done here is a bit tricky and I'll leave it be for now. People who
have made cmake implementation on the link above, probably realize and
understand this more than we in this discussion.

And besides, the cmake build system could even be done as a separate
project out of php for starters if anyone might be interested in doing
that.

Peter Kokot