make, bmake and gmake

[Stathis Kamperis]

2009/10/21 Saifi Khan <saifi.khan at datasynergy.org>:
> Hi:
>
> Is there a difference between 'make' and 'bmake' on DragonFly
> BSD 2.4.1 ?

With a certain degree of uncertainty (heh, what an oxymoron), I can say that:

make is "our" make utility which belongs to our base. It's the very
same make utility that is used to build world and kernel or to
checkout the git src repository when you type 'make src-checkout'
inside /usr. make(1) can only parse our own Makefiles.

Pkgsrc on the other hand needs the netbsd's make utility (netbsd is
the "native" platform of pkgsrc, so to speak). Therefore, we bootstrap
netbsd's make which results in "bmake" and use that to interpret the
pkgsrc's Makefiles.

All the make flavors (*BSD, GNU) share a common base but they have
diverged during the course of time.


Cheers,
Stathis