Re: [PATCH 2/2] Makefile: drop GNU Make < 4.0 compatibility code

On Thu, Aug 27, 2026 at 04:29:29PM +0300, Ilias Apalodimas wrote:
> Hi Suraj
> 
> On Thu, 27 Aug 2026 at 15:11, Suraj Kakade <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > RHEL/CentOS 7, a popular distribution that installs GNU Make 3.82,
> > reached EOM/EOL on June 30, 2024. While you may get extended support,
> > it is a good time to raise the minimum GNU Make version.
> >
> > The new requirement, GNU Make 4.0, was released in October, 2013.
> >
> > Raise the enforced minimum GNU Make version to 4.0 and drop the
> > now-unreachable compatibility code for older versions:
> >
> > - Add an explicit "GNU Make >= 4.0 is required" version-check gate.
> > - Simplify the "make -s" (silent mode) detection to a single
> >   unconditional check instead of branching on make-4 vs make-3.8x.
> > - Drop the GNU Make 3.x sub-make workaround, which is now dead code.
> 
> Overall I agree on bumnping the minimum requirements to 4.0. In fact,
> I think I did that when I did the Makefile bump to 5.x. However, the
> macOS tools stopped compiling. We need to check the CI for that before
> merging this.
> 
> >
> > Fixes: ffe29ebc0701 ("kbuild: sync top Makefile with Linux 3.18-rc1")
> > Fixes: 5f520875bdf0 ("kbuild: Bump the build system to 5.1")
> > Signed-off-by: Suraj Kakade <[email protected]>
> 
> Why do we need fixes tags?

Yes, the kernel didn't enforce this requirement as the minimum until
around v6.10 or so.

-- 
Tom

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