> don't make infrastructure tools like gmake depend OS specific APIs Even if you're going to implement OS-specific APIs you still need a general case for OSes

> don't make infrastructure tools like gmake depend OS specific APIs Even if you're going to implement OS-specific APIs you still need a general case for OSes that don't support those APIs or don't support them correctly. That means you still need to solve the original problem regardless, which then means that it doesn't actually save you time and energy to use those APIs but rather creates more development and maintenance work and not less. If those APIs don't provide you a significant benefit (reliability, performance, etc.) then it's likely not worth implementing them at all if the general case works, and if it doesn't work you have to fix it anyway.