Subject: Re: MAKE (1st time using...)
To: UCKO AT VAX1 DOT ROCKHURST DOT EDU (Aaron Ucko)
Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 11:37:47 -0500 (CDT)
Cc: pke AT engstad DOT ingok DOT hitos DOT no, djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
From: mcastle AT umr DOT edu (Mike Castle)

Amazingly enough Aaron Ucko said:
> Why was the decision not to allow just any whitespace made again?  It
> seems rather arbitrary, particularly as most other programs don't care.

It was an arbitrary decision.  One that Stu Feldman (I *think*
that's his name), almost immediately felt was a bad decision when
he released the first make program many years ago.  But, he also
felt, that changing the definition of a makefile, after it had
already been "widely distributed" would have been an even greater
mistake.  So here we are.

You could probably get more information on this than you ever
cared to really know by asking about it on alt.folklore.computer,
comp.programming, or comp.lang.c.
 
Btw, there is a very simple one line patch to GNUMake to allow
any whitespace there.  I believe it's been posted to this list
before.  But it's just never seemed to have been pushed hard
enough by GNUMake users, to get rolled into the official
distribution.  While I imagine that the make maintainer would
probably be resitant to such including such a patch (after all,
it's really only the PC world that has makes that take any white
space there, at least I don't know of any unix makes that will),
I imagine that if enough people asked for it, he might be
persuaded.  After all, GNUMake already has extensions that aren't
in the POSIX standard.

mrc
-- 
Mike Castle .-=NEXUS=-.  Life is like a clock:  You can work constantly
  mcastle AT cs DOT umr DOT edu     and be right all the time, or not work at all
   mcastle AT umr DOT edu       and be right at least twice a day.  -- mrc
    We are all of us living in the shadow of Manhattan.  -- Watchmen