RE: Complex pattern rules broken in win32-make (MINGW).

[Peter Dons Tychsen]

Ah yes.

I had forgotten about the meaning of "\%" in make.
I should have known better. Looks like my memory cells are not looking
to bright in the new year :-)

However, i am not sure i like the solution where i have to use "/"
instead of "\".
This solution can lead to other errors.

Consider the following example:

obj/%.o: src/%.c
  some_odd_win_compiler -c -o $@ $<

Now the compiler will be called with (for src.o target):

# some_odd_win_compiler -c -o obj/src.o obj/src.c

This will not work for many dos/win tools, as they might puke on the "/"
in the path.
Sadly, it does not really matter what i like, as none of the solutions
work at all.

All of these scenarios fail:

1) obj\%.o: src\%.c     - I understand why this will never work (See
Eli/Pauls remarks).
                          Is consistent with the way a DOS path is
expressed in C ("c:\\some\\path").
2) obj/%.o: src/%.c     - This should work, as DOS/WIN make accepts "/"
as "\" for paths.
3) obj\\%.o: src\\%.c   - This should work, as the double "\" should
undo the effect a single "\" has on a "%".
                          (like other escaped sequences - escaped left
to right, with no recursive parsing).

2) & 3) probably fails due to the way (or maybe the order) in which the
rules and prequisite lines are parsed.

If i wanted to fix this, where should i start?
Which module handles the parsing of these elements?

Anyway, thanks for your snappy and precise input,

Hope the new year brings tons of joy to Make, You and your surroundings!

/pedro


-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Smith [mailto:address@hidden
Sent: 2. januar 2007 05:46
To: Eli Zaretskii
Cc: Peter Dons Tychsen; address@hidden
Subject: Re: Complex pattern rules broken in win32-make (MINGW).

On Sun, 2006-12-31 at 06:28 +0200, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> > This rule breaks down:
> >
> > obj\%.o: src\%.c
> >
> > This should however be handled correctly on windows... no ?
>
> It cannot be fixed easily, as the backslash is required to be able to
> use a literal percent character.

Eli is correct.  The GNU make manual defines the sequence "\%" to be a
literal "%" (the backslash escapes the percent so it's not treated as a
pattern match character).

It's remotely possible that you can get what you want this way:

  obj\\%.o: src\\%.c

since GNU make defines that a backslash can be used to escape a
backslash that would otherwise escape a percent; so the above should
resolve to what you want.

However, I can't say for sure this will work.  In general it's best to
follow Eli's excellent advice and use "/" instead of "\" in your
makefiles, even on Windows.

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------
 Paul D. Smith <address@hidden>          Find some GNU make tips at:
 http://www.gnu.org                      http://make.paulandlesley.org
 "Please remain calm...I may be mad, but I am a professional." --Mad
Scientist



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