>: 5.  What is there about bmake that "make" doesn't cover?

>"make" != "bmake" on all platforms.  And, when a build-dependent change is
>made to bmake, "current bmake" != "src tree bmake", either.  Building a
>bmake from the src tree is the only way to guarantee workability.

Would this bmake happen to be my autoconf'd version of our make?
If yes, you might want to grab the lastest/greatest from 
ftp.netbsd.org:/ftp/pub/incoming/sjg/bmake-3.1.7.tar.gz
it was sync'd with -current this morning after I committed the -dx and
MAKEFLAGS etc changes.

bootstrapping bmake is pretty simple now and it's configure
has a bunch of --with-foo args to allow setting defaulst for
MACHINE, MACHINE_ARCH as well as what goes into DEFSYSPATH.

Unless someone finds a bug, I don't anticipate any further changes for
some time.

--sjg