Re: Why basename in make is defined differently from basename from coreutils?

[Paul Smith]

On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 11:02 PM, Peng Yu <address@hidden> wrote:
> I don't quite know the history of make on these commands and for what
> reason these command are defined as they are right now. But I'm feel
> that probably it is better to change the definition of these commands
> so that they are consistent with coreutils. In case that people worry
> about the backward compatibility issues, these new definitions can be
> supported by specifying a command line option to GNU Make. As time
> passes by, this command line option can become the default and
> eventually the old definition of these commands can be removed from
> GNU Make.

GNU make's implementation of these functions has been around for over
twenty years now.  They far predate my time as a GNU make maintainer and
I don't know why that particular implementation was chosen.

However, changing them now in any way that breaks backward-compatibility
would be far too disruptive.

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