[tz] make error

[Guy Harris]

On Nov 17, 2023, at 11:20 AM, Paul Eggert <eggert at cs.ucla.edu> wrote:

> On 2023-11-17 00:30, Robert Elz wrote:
> 
>> It might be worth adding a "common issues" file
> 
> Yes, GNU Emacs does something like this, with its etc/PROBLEMS file (currently 4412 lines).
> 
> Currently TZDB puts this sort of thing in Makefile, which discusses the C89 issue along with dozens of similar porting issues. Evidently Makefile isn't always being read; this is not surprising as it has hundreds of lines of comments.
> 
> Not sure that a separate PROBLEMS file (which would also have hundreds of lines) would always be read either. To some extent we'll always be stuck getting email saying "this doesn't work for me" by people who haven't had time to read the relevant documentation, regardless of where that documentation is.

Perhaps the currently-52-lines-long (as of 2023c) README file could, in the section that talks about building the code, more vigorously point people either to the Makefile, as it does now, or to a separate document (which, if it contains just text, might be more readable than a Makefile comment), including explicitly saying "IF YOU'RE ON AN OLDER SYSTEM, SUCH AS RHEL 7/CENTOS whatever, YOU NEED TO READ THIS SECTION OF THIS DOCUMENT AND DO WHAT IT SAYS IF YOU WANT TO COMPILE THIS CODE".