Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 19:59:03 +0200 (IST)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To: Robert Hoehne <robert DOT hoehne AT mathematik DOT tu-chemnitz DOT de>
Cc: DJGPP workers <djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com>
Subject: Re: Problems with make 3.75
In-Reply-To: <Pine.HPP.3.95.961030110537.13520D-100000@newton.mathematik.tu-chemnitz.de>
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.961030194643.21770L-100000@is>
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On Wed, 30 Oct 1996, Robert Hoehne wrote:

> I found the reason for this and an other problem only after 
> checking the sources for make.

An easier way would be just to ask me.

> Eli, you have changed the
> special chars for checking, when the shell is called, that
> it is called when found special characters for 4(N)DOS. These
> are at least '^' and '&' (maybe also some others). But this
> disables the use of long command lines when calling some
> programs with this characters without quoting them.

This is incorrect.  Make 3.75 doesn't call COMMAND.COM when it sees
characters special to the shell, it calls `system'.  And `system' in v2.01
only calls DOS-style shells (COMMAND.COM or [4N]DOS) when it has to run a
batch file or an internal command (like `for'); in all other cases it
emulates the shell, precisely so that you can have long command lines.  So
something else must be going on if you have trouble with such commands. 
If you cannot figure out what it is, tell me more about your system setup,
send me the commands which fail, and how do they fail (what error 
messages did you see) and I'll try to help. 

> And
> to the problem with GDB (I think this is the same for the
> binutils) one of the files (I don't know exactly) is compiled
> with the defines for the targets which contain '&' and is longer
> than 126 characters.

I will look into the GDB source distribution.

> BTW: I found this (mis)feature at first, when I tried to call
> sed with the not unusual script, which conatins a '^'.

IMHO, Sed scripts should always be quoted.

> I think we/you should tell the user about this or change the
> makefiles for gdb and binutils or change the behaviour of
> make.

There is a README.dos file in the Make distribution which tells most of
the new features.  I've put a lot of new functionality into this port of
Make, and I cannot put every tiny detail about things that has changed
into the docs.  That's why I am here, ready to answer questions and help
solve problems.