Has Apple backported anything recent to their forked gmake? Have they ever backported any features for that matter?

The `-j` is meant for the top-level invocation only, and the $(MAKE) pattern is standard.The `+` or $(MAKE) &quot;tricks&quot; to ensure the jobserver is inherited in submake and any other subprocess are no longer needed in gmake 4.4 (from 2022) because it defaults to a FIFO instead of pipes. The author should just upgrade gmake :).

Yeah, no: We use recursive make extensively with a mix of &quot;just normal makefiles&quot; and autoconf schtuff, and it all works fine and reliably.It&#x27;s like any programming: Understand your tools, understand your requirements, understand your design and implementation (code carefully), test, review the design and implementation, test, repeat as necessary.Still a big fan of make all these decades later. One day I may reach BJJ blue belt level.

Disagree on main premise of that.If you have sub-projects which cross-depend on each other (no total ordering), then recursive make will have a bad time. I agree.Author thinks the best way is to stop doing recursive make. I disagree.IMHO, the best way to solve this is to arrange your sub-projects properly, so the are no circular dependencies and thus there is one correct order. Not only your build should be a DAG on file level, it should also be a DAG on the sub-project&#x2F;directory level. Then a single recursive &quot;make&quot; pass builds everything properly, no need for ugly tricks like running make twice, or intentionally omitting some dependencies.(Even better option is to stop using make for such large projects - it&#x27;s great for smaller ones, but for the huge ones, there are much better runners available. But I assume there is some reason to use make)

Don&#x27;t do it!<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;accu.org&#x2F;journals&#x2F;overload&#x2F;14&#x2F;71&#x2F;miller_2004&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;accu.org&#x2F;journals&#x2F;overload&#x2F;14&#x2F;71&#x2F;miller_2004&#x2F;</a>Recursive Make Considered HarmfulBy Peter Miller

Recursive `make` and `-j`