Re: Query regarding make error [target pattern contains no `%']

[J. Grant]

Thank you for the clarification.

> If you were running on a UNIX machine then you'd get this error
> regardless of whether or not you had quotes.
>
> When you don't have quotes, the Windows port of GNU make has special
> code that recognizes drive letters and doesn't consider the ":" in a
> drive letter to be a special character.  The algorithm for testing for
> drive letters does not understand quoted strings: it basically looks to
> see if the first character is alphabetic and the second character is a
> colon.
>
> I don't have any great ideas as to the best way to resolve this: adding
> a special additional line to the error message only if you're on a
> Windows system doesn't seem like a good idea.
>
> Maybe the algorithm for detecting drive letters on Windows should be
> enhanced to allow for quoted filenames.  Folks on this list will need to
> make that determination.

I can make this improvement (support paths like "d:/test.c" etc), and
submit a patch for consideration if that would be desired?



I noticed that paths with escaped spaces work with windows32 make build,
e.g.:
d:/test\ path

I have an idea for an extra patch, if there is a path such as:
"d:/test path"

in a makefile it might be possible to treat the quotes as indicating
that the text is part of a single path.  Then the spaces in the path
could be upgraded to escaped spaces.  Meaning the resulting path would be:
"d:/test\ path"

Which would solve the spaces in path problem.  Although, perhaps this
breaks compatibility? Any thoughts/corrections?



Kind regards

JG