Splitting lines problem in make-3.80 versus 3.81

[Warren Dodge]

I sent in a bug report the other day and got this as a response.

> From make's NEWS file for the 3.81 release:
> 
> * WARNING: Backward-incompatibility!
> 
>   In order to comply with POSIX, the way in which GNU make processes
>   backslash-newline sequences in recipes has changed.  If your makefiles
>   use backslash-newline sequences inside of single-quoted strings in
>   recipes you will be impacted by this change.  See the GNU make manual
>   subsection "Splitting Recipe Lines" (node "Splitting Lines"), in
>   section "Recipe Syntax", chapter "Writing Recipe in Rules", for
>   details.

I tried it on my specific problem and indeed it solved the issue. A
co-worker was working on another Makefile an having a similar issue. We
tried the solution above and ran into a number if strange issues.

I have attached a small tree of files which will show what we are trying
to do. It has the "runit" script which will process through the
combinations and save the results in log files.

In the Makefile I have put comments in each section of the code tested
describing what we did and showing the results.

In general make-3.80 had some serious core dump issues with what we
tried.  I don't expect any f them to be fixed unless of course the cause
is in 3.81.

In 3.81 we had to go to greater lengths to get the operation of the
Makefile to work. Hee is what the co-worker said about the problem.

 >>> The variable method can get tricky too, if the perl code you are running
 >>> makes reference to automatic variables, as they are not defined except
 >>> in the target.  The perl code in question in this example uses the
 >>> $(word 2,$^) to get name of the second file in the dependency list, so
 >>> the variable has to be defined as a Target-Specific or Pattern-Specific
 >>> variable, but making these in a way that is compatible to both 3.80 and
 >>> 3.81 is not easy.

I am not sure if any of this is a "bug" but it wasn't apparent how to
attach the issue.  I just wanted to bounce this all off of yu to see
what your thoughts were on these issues.

Assuming there is a bug we hope it can be addressed. If it is just not
understanding what is going on maybe the "ifo" page on this subject can
be enhanced to help others address this.


Let me know if I can help by supplying more information.

makeSplit.tar.gz
Description: application/gunzip