Actually, I take that back. I was just using "makes it easier
to have a single top level check", but that's not really a good
rationale. I wouldn't want to be stuck if gcc decides to
move at a glacial pace.
Probably a policy similar to the C++NN one makes more sense.
I see now that 3.81 was released in 2006, so should not be
a problem to require it.
OOC, I wrote a quick&dirty script (attached) to check for GNU Make
availability in the GCC compile farm. It tries all gcc*.fsffrance.org
from 1 to 250. I don't have access to all machines setup, as some are
multiplexed on a single IP with different ports, requiring tweaking
the local ssh config. However, what I found was already interesting,
I believe. Here's the result:
Number of accessible hostnames: 66
Number of inaccessible hostnames: 184
Hostnames with GNU Make: 66
Hostnames without GNU Make: 0
Distribution:
56 GNU Make 3.81
2 GNU Make 3.82
7 GNU Make 4.0
1 GNU Make 4.1
Unique hosts with GNU Make: 20
Unique hosts without GNU Make: 0
Distribution:
10 GNU Make 3.81
2 GNU Make 3.82
7 GNU Make 4.0
1 GNU Make 4.1
I.e., I didn't find a single machine still stuck with GNU Make 3.80.
Thanks,
Pedro Alves