Re: Possible solution for special characters in makefile paths

[Paul Smith]

On Thu, 2014-02-20 at 09:47 -0800, Bill Cox wrote:
> Unless someone suggests a truly backward-compatible mechanism, I
> recommend that this change trigger at least a major version number
> change, and possibly (yech) fork the tool.

Can you provide some justification for that position?  I'm interested in
recommendations and suggestions, but I'd prefer that they come with
_some_ supporting arguments.

Also I don't know what "fork the tool" means.

There are backward incompatible "edge-case" changes on virtually every
release of GNU make; see the NEWS file for examples.  Given the
free-form format of makefiles it's almost impossible to make
advancements without encroaching on behaviors somewhere.  It's not
immediately clear to me that this change would be more impactful than
most others, but I'm certainly interested in any real-life experiences
to the contrary...