1This directory contains the 3.81 release of GNU Make. 2 3See the file NEWS for the user-visible changes from previous releases. 4In addition, there have been bugs fixed. 5 6Please check the system-specific notes below for any caveats related to 7your operating system. 8 9For general building and installation instructions, see the file INSTALL. 10 11If you need to build GNU Make and have no other `make' program to use, 12you can use the shell script `build.sh' instead. To do this, first run 13`configure' as described in INSTALL. Then, instead of typing `make' to 14build the program, type `sh build.sh'. This should compile the program 15in the current directory. Then you will have a Make program that you can 16use for `./make install', or whatever else. 17 18Some systems' Make programs are broken and cannot process the Makefile for 19GNU Make. If you get errors from your system's Make when building GNU 20Make, try using `build.sh' instead. 21 22 23GNU Make is free software. See the file COPYING for copying conditions. 24 25 26Downloading 27----------- 28 29GNU Make can be obtained in many different ways. See a description here: 30 31 http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html 32 33 34Documentation 35------------- 36 37GNU make is fully documented in the GNU Make manual, which is contained 38in this distribution as the file make.texinfo. You can also find 39on-line and preformatted (PostScript and DVI) versions at the FSF's web 40site. There is information there about ordering hardcopy documentation. 41 42 http://www.gnu.org/ 43 http://www.gnu.org/doc/doc.html 44 http://www.gnu.org/manual/manual.html 45 46 47Development 48----------- 49 50GNU Make development is hosted by Savannah, the FSF's online development 51management tool. Savannah is here: 52 53 http://savannah.gnu.org 54 55And the GNU Make development page is here: 56 57 http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/make/ 58 59You can find most information concerning the development of GNU Make at 60this site. 61 62 63Bug Reporting 64------------- 65 66You can send GNU make bug reports to <bug-make@gnu.org>. Please see the 67section of the GNU make manual entitled `Problems and Bugs' for 68information on submitting useful and complete bug reports. 69 70You can also use the online bug tracking system in the Savannah GNU Make 71project to submit new problem reports or search for existing ones: 72 73 http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=make 74 75If you need help using GNU make, try these forums: 76 77 help-make@gnu.org 78 help-utils@gnu.org 79 news:gnu.utils.help 80 news:gnu.utils.bug 81 82 http://savannah.gnu.org/support/?group=make 83 84You may also find interesting patches to GNU Make available here: 85 86 http://savannah.gnu.org/patch/?group=make 87 88Note these patches are provided by our users as a service and we make no 89statements regarding their correctness. Please contact the authors 90directly if you have a problem or suggestion for a patch available on 91this page. 92 93 94CVS Access 95---------- 96 97The GNU make source repository is available via anonymous CVS from the 98GNU Subversions CVS server; look here for details: 99 100 http://savannah.gnu.org/cvs/?group=make 101 102Please note: you won't be able to build GNU make from CVS without 103installing appropriate maintainer's tools, such as GNU m4, automake, 104autoconf, Perl, GNU make, and GCC. See the README.cvs file for hints on 105how to build GNU make once these tools are available. We make no 106guarantees about the contents or quality of the latest code in the CVS 107repository: it is not unheard of for code that is known to be broken to 108be checked in. Use at your own risk. 109 110 111System-specific Notes 112--------------------- 113 114It has been reported that the XLC 1.2 compiler on AIX 3.2 is buggy such 115that if you compile make with `cc -O' on AIX 3.2, it will not work 116correctly. It is said that using `cc' without `-O' does work. 117 118The standard /bin/sh on SunOS 4.1.3_U1 and 4.1.4 is broken and cannot be 119used to configure GNU make. Please install a different shell such as 120bash or pdksh in order to run "configure". See this message for more 121information: 122 http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-autoconf/2003-10/msg00190.html 123 124One area that is often a problem in configuration and porting is the code 125to check the system's current load average. To make it easier to test and 126debug this code, you can do `make check-loadavg' to see if it works 127properly on your system. (You must run `configure' beforehand, but you 128need not build Make itself to run this test.) 129 130Another potential source of porting problems is the support for large 131files (LFS) in configure for those operating systems that provide it. 132Please report any bugs that you find in this area. If you run into 133difficulties, then as a workaround you should be able to disable LFS by 134adding the `--disable-largefile' option to the `configure' script. 135 136On systems that support micro- and nano-second timestamp values and 137where stat(2) provides this information, GNU make will use it when 138comparing timestamps to get the most accurate possible result. However, 139note that many current implementations of tools that *set* timestamps do 140not preserve micro- or nano-second granularity. This means that "cp -p" 141and other similar tools (tar, etc.) may not exactly duplicate timestamps 142with micro- and nano-second granularity on some systems. If your build 143system contains rules that depend on proper behavior of tools like "cp 144-p", you should consider using the .LOW_RESOLUTION_TIME pseudo-target to 145force make to treat them properly. See the manual for details. 146 147 148Ports 149----- 150 151 - See README.customs for details on integrating GNU make with the 152 Customs distributed build environment from the Pmake distribution. 153 154 - See readme.vms for details about GNU Make on OpenVMS. 155 156 - See README.Amiga for details about GNU Make on AmigaDOS. 157 158 - See README.W32 for details about GNU Make on Windows NT, 95, or 98. 159 160 - See README.DOS for compilation instructions on MS-DOS and MS-Windows 161 using DJGPP tools. 162 163 A precompiled binary of the MSDOS port of GNU Make is available as part 164 of DJGPP; see the WWW page http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/ for more 165 information. 166 167Please note there are two _separate_ ports of GNU make for Microsoft 168systems: a native Windows tool built with (for example) MSVC or Cygwin, 169and a DOS-based tool built with DJGPP. Please be sure you are looking 170at the right README! 171 172 173------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 174Copyright (C) 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1751998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software Foundation, 176Inc. 177This file is part of GNU Make. 178 179GNU Make is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the 180terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software 181Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later version. 182 183GNU Make is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY 184WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR 185A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. 186 187You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with 188GNU Make; see the file COPYING. If not, write to the Free Software 189Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA. 190