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

[Edwin Torok <edwin.torok@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> 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?

Best regards,
—Edwin