[Buildroot] RFC dependencies: checking minimum make version

[Thomas De Schampheleire]

On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 8:07 PM, Peter Korsgaard <jacmet at uclibc.org> wrote:
>>>>>> "Thomas" == Thomas De Schampheleire <patrickdepinguin+buildroot at gmail.com> writes:
>
> Hi,
>
>  Thomas> 2. Check for the make version in make instead of in shell, e.g. with
>  Thomas> the following pattern: (adopted from
>  Thomas> http://www.jgc.org/blog/cookbook-sample.pdf)
>  Thomas> need := 3.81
>  Thomas> ok := $(filter $(need),$(firstword $(sort $(MAKE_VERSION) $(need))))
>  Thomas> ifeq (,$(ok))
>  Thomas> $(error make too old!)
>  Thomas> endif
>
>  Thomas> This will not work when make 10.x comes out because of the sort trick,
>  Thomas> but otherwise should work fine. This code should be included as early
>  Thomas> as possible in the Makefile.
>
>  Thomas> What do you think?
>
> The likelyhood of people using <3.81 is probably getting fairly small,
> but I'm OK with such a test (with a better error message and variables
> though) at the top of the main Makefile.
>
> Out of interest, on what system did you hit this?

This problem was seen on a workstation in Shanghai, with an old RedHat
distribution (not sure which exactly, but the kernel was 2.6.9, so
pretty old).

I'll try to submit a patch one of these days.

Thanks,
Thomas