GNU make 4.4 is out!

November 1, 2022

Yesterday GNU make project announced 4.4 release!

The release contains extensive list of new additions and backward incompatible changes in various corner cases.

Multi-target rule change mentioned before will not break bulds in make-4.4. Breaking change was postponed for make-4.5 release. make-4.4 will print diagnostic warning for simple cases, Worth watching for the warnings. So far I see similar warnings in the following packages:

dtc-1.6.1.drv:Makefile:387: warning: pattern recipe did not update peer target 'dtc-parser.output'.
ghc-9.0.2.drv:libraries/base/ghc.mk:4: warning: pattern recipe did not update peer target 'libraries/base/dist-install/build/GHC/Clock_hsc.c'.
git-2.38.1.drv:Makefile:354: warning: pattern recipe did not update peer target 'git.5'.
kmod-30.drv:Makefile:615: warning: pattern recipe did not update peer target 'depmod.5'.
libbonobo-2.32.1.drv:Makefile:802: warning: pattern recipe did not update peer target 'Bonobo_ActivationContext-imodule.c'.
ORBit2-2.14.19.drv:Makefile:1097: warning: pattern recipe did not update peer target 'test1-imodule.c'.
pciutils-3.8.0.drv:Makefile:114: warning: pattern recipe did not update peer target 'lspci.5'.
perf-linux-6.0.2.drv:Makefile:262: warning: pattern recipe did not update peer target 'perf.5'.
rethinkdb-2.4.1.drv:mk/support/build.mk:174: warning: pattern recipe did not update peer target 'install-include-gtest_1.7.0'.
sane-backends-1.0.32.drv:Makefile:957: warning: pattern recipe did not update peer target 'gamma4scanimage.5'.
shadow-4.11.1.drv:Makefile:1062: warning: pattern recipe did not update peer target 'man1/chgpasswd.8'.

Worth fixing those upstream before next make-4.5 release.

On another topic make --shuffle mentioned before is now available in official release. This should lower the barrier for users to try it out once make-4.4 triclkles into downstream distributions.

Have fun!