GNU Make 3.81 Stability Joke

RFC: Bump minimum GNU Make version to 3.81 Jonathan Wakely jwakely.gcc@gmail.com Wed Jun 24 16:51:36 GMT 2026 Previous message (by thread): RFC LRA: Carrying hard registers around Next message (by thread): RFC: Bump minimum GNU Make version to 3.81 Messages sorted by: [date] | [thread] | [subject] | [author] Currently we document that GNU Make 3.80 is required. That was released in 2002. GNU Make 3.81 was released in April 2006. I would like to suggest that 20 years is enough time for 3.81 to be widespread. Bumping the requirement to 3.81 would allow us to use the $(abspath ...) function, which we already started using in libstdc++, not realising that it relies on a newer version than our docs require. 3.81 also has $(lastword ...), $(realpath ...), $(or ...), and $(and ...). GNU Make 3.82 from 2010 adds the .ONESHELL feature but maybe 2010 is too modern for our tests :-) Ну хоть где-то стабильность

A screenshot of a GNU mailing-list discussion proposes raising the minimum required GNU Make version from 3.80 to 3.81, even though version 3.81 was released in 2006. The joke is that software infrastructure can remain stuck on decades-old versions, so “20 years” is treated as recent and stable enough; the Russian caption means “At least there is stability somewhere.” It is sent as a reaction to outdated technology, slow development, or systems that refuse to move forward. EN: A screenshot of a GNU mailing-list discussion proposes raising the minimum required GNU Make version from 3.80 to 3.81, even though version 3.81 was released in 2006. The joke is that software infrastructure can remain stuck on decades-old versions, so “20 years” is treated as recent and stable enough; the Russian caption means “At least there is stability somewhere.” It is sent as a reaction to outdated technology, slow development, or systems that refuse to move forward.

• @ithueti / 18420 2026-06-25