Re: minor bug in makefile of coreutils

[Bob Proulx]

Toralf Förster sent me the comments added to the bug report by SpanKY:
> > >From comment #5 of http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=53881 :
> >
> > you should reply back to that gnu guy ... the error is in coreutils,
> > it is NOT a problem with make

Negative.  This is not an error in coreutils.  The quoted text does
not appear anywhere in coreutils.  It was perhaps added by a gentoo
patch?  Or perhaps it is from a completely different version of
coreutils than the 5.2.0 version quoted.

> > if you review man/Makefile.am, you'll see this tidbit:
> > .x.1:
> >     @rm -f $@
> >     rm -fr $t; \
> >     @echo "Updating man page $@";  \
> >     ...

Negative.  That text does NOT appear in coreutils-5.2.0.  The text of
this snippet from coreutils-5.2.0 which is the version stated in the
bug report is the following:

.x.1:
        @rm -f $@
        @echo "Updating man page $@";           \
        mkdir $t;                               \
        (cd $t && $(LN_S) ../../src/$(mapped_name)$(EXEEXT) $*$(EXEEXT)); \
        $(PERL) -- $(srcdir)/help2man           \
            --info-page='$(PACKAGE) $*'         \
            --include=$(srcdir)/$*.x            \
            --output=$@ $t/$*$(EXEEXT)
        @chmod a-w $@
        @rm -rf $t

If you see something different than the above then you have a modified
version of coreutils-5.2.0.  You can verify this yourself by checking
the pristine sources.

  http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/

> > the subtle bug here is that putting '; \' at the ends of the lines
> > like that tells make to invoke this all in one shell

That is not a bug.  Being able to run multiple commands in one
subshell process is an important feature of make.  That is behavior as
expected from make.

I am guessing that gentoo includes a patch in their version 5.2.0-r2
that adds this modification to the source as an inadvertant bug.  Not
being familiar with gentoo packaging I don't know where to look to see
the patches that they have applied.  If you would educate me on this I
would be able to look at to review what the gentoo packaging is
doing.  I am sure the problem will be found there.

Bob