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I can give an example.

Recently I was working on a project with multiple Makefiles, ie Makefile.{win,nix}. My Emacs config did not load makefile-mode due to the suffixes. As spaces are my default, I got spaces on TAB, iirc even after turning on makefile-mode.

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Shouldn't you configure emacs to auto-detect tabs/spaces on the file you've opened?

Whoever is responsible should rename the files so their names end with ".mk" or ".make", the standard extensions that Emacs and other editors recognize.

Auto-detecting tabs/spaces sounds like magic, which not everyone likes.

Of course emacs did not "detect" your non-standard makefile.

It is your responsibility to let editors know that, be adding that magical first line to your make.

Not sure who you're responding to. I don't blame anything here, just illustrate what might cause confusion of tabs and spaces in Makefiles, namely unexpected filename suffixes. Holds true for other editors besides Emacs obviously.

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