[Mailman-Developers] Re: [Mailman-checkins] CVS: mailman/messages Makefile.in,2.1,2.2

[Ron Jarrell]

At 02:45 PM 5/29/01 +0200, Thomas wrote:
>resource at hand to help me through the differences; if anyone sees such a
>resource online, please let me know ;) In the mean time, Barry, if this
>isn't fixed before an almost-real release, we'll either have to ship .po
>files, or insist on GNU make (which is available almost everywhere, even on
>BSD systems, though usually as 'gmake' there.) The installation procedure
>works with BSD make now that I regenerated the .po files with GNU make.

Unless it's absolutely impossible to do otherwise, I always recommend going
with the least common denominator make.  Each extra piece you require before
someone can run mailman reduces the number of people willing to bother.  
And I think the "Whatinhell? It can't run with a normal make?" effect would
be the proverbial straw for a large crowd.

Ship it with pregenerated files.  Include a warning that if you fiddle with the
generated files, you'll probably need to install a bunch of tools, or they won't
regenerate right.  Included in the tools would be a make compatible with the
gmake extensions.  It's similar to including your autoconf and bison source
files, and the generated configure and .c files, and warning people that if they
want to customize, the'll need autoconf and/or bison...