Re: Bug with double slashes

[Paul Smith]

On Thu, 2009-06-04 at 16:07 -0400, Aleksey Yakovlev wrote:
> Please take a look at my posting #4:
> 
> http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.utils.bug/browse_thread/thread/e23e2352bf6f8a91?hl=en#

It would work out better to use this list.  Here's the message I guess
you mean:

> It looks like the make 3.81 contains a bug. My makefile is a simple 
> two-liner: 
> 
> //%: //% 
>       @echo oops! 

> (I know, that double slash is not what people normally use, but this 
> string might appear after string substitutions. BTW, the '//name' is a
> valid syntax) 
> 
> The make 3.81 chokes on the makefile above, if and only if the 
> makefile is defined as an absolute pathname. I mean, that 
> 
>   make -r -f $HOME/path/to/myMakefile xyz 
> 
> produces a very long error message, mostly consisting of slashes, 
> complaining about too long filename (of the makefile), and it takes 
> significant time. The case 
> 
>   cd $HOME/path/to 
>   make -r -f myMakefile xyz 
> 
> works fine. 
> 
> BTW, the make 3.80 works normally in both cases 

I'm not sure what "normally" means, but the above makefile is obviously
incorrect: you have a pattern depending on itself (//% is a prerequisite
of //%).

When I run this with GNU make 3.80, I get this error:

        make: Circular /tmp/x1.mk <- /tmp/x1.mk dependency dropped.

Is that what you mean by "normal"?

I do agree that something is broken in the circular prerequisite
detection in 3.81 (and even in current CVS) because these versions of
make don't notice the circularity and tries to continuously to create a
new dependency until it goes over some limit (I didn't wait to see what
happened).

I'll look at this bug but the above makefile will never do anything
except report a circularity error (best case).

-- 
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