Re: [PATCH 1/7] tools/tests/*/Makefile: factor out common PHONY rules into Rules.mk

[Jan Beulich <jbeulich@xxxxxxxx>]

On 24.02.2026 11:01, Edwin Torok wrote:
> 
> 
>> On 24 Feb 2026, at 09:42, Jan Beulich <jbeulich@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> First, since this looks to be recurring: Please don't send HTML mails.
> 
> Thanks, didn’t notice my mail client was doing that, changed the settings now.
> 
>>
>> On 24.02.2026 10:38, Edwin Torok wrote:
>>> On 23 Feb 2026, at 16:37, Jan Beulich <jbeulich@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> On 23.02.2026 11:14, Edwin Török wrote:
>>> Introduce a new tools/tests/Rules.mk that must be included *last* in a
>>> Makefile, after TARGETS is defined.
>>>
>>> Requiring inclusion after TARGETS is defined is certainly okay. Requiring 
>>> it to
>>> be included absolutely last is imo going too far. There surely are going to 
>>> be
>>> cases where something wants overriding or adding to.
>>>
>>>
>>> I’ll change this so that the Makefile defines XEN_ROOT, CFLAGS, LDFLAGS, 
>>> TARGETS, and then includes the file.
>>>
>>>
>>> --- /dev/null
>>> +++ b/tools/tests/Rules.mk
>>> @@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
>>> +# Usage: include this last in your Makefile.
>>> +#
>>> +# For example:
>>> +#
>>> +# XEN_ROOT = $(CURDIR)/../../..
>>> +# include $(XEN_ROOT)/tools/Rules.mk
>>> +#
>>> +# TARGETS := ...
>>> +# ...
>>> +# include $(XEN_ROOT)/tools/tests/Rules.mk
>>> +
>>> +ifndef XEN_ROOT
>>> +$(error XEN_ROOT is not defined)
>>> +endif
>>> +
>>> +.PHONY: all
>>> +all: $(TARGETS)
>>> +.DEFAULT_GOAL: all
>>>
>>> Make 3.80, which ./README still says we support, doesn't look to know this.
>>>
>>> Do you know which (Linux) distribution and version would have Make 3.80 so 
>>> I can test my changes there?
>>
>> Not without a lot of digging. Perhaps we simply want to bump the minimum 
>> version,
>> to "sync up" with what we did for binutils, gcc, and clang?
> 
> Minimum binutils is 2.25, which excludes CentOS6. CentOS7 has 2.27 and make 
> 3.82.
> The only other OS that I see that’d have make 3.81 and binutils >= 2.25 would 
> be Ubuntu 14.04, which is EoL.
> 
> So we could update to Make 3.82?
> 
> If we exclude CentOS7 (which is EoL), then the next minimum make that I see 
> would be 4.2.1. Would that be too big of a jump?

I would take gcc and binutils (both dating back to 2015) as reference, which 
would
make it either 4.0 or 4.1 which we may want to pick. (Which doesn't exclude 3.82
as an option, of course.)

Jan