%% Harsha Kalidindi <address@hidden> writes:
>> GNU make works exactly as I've described above: first it looks for the
>> pathname exactly as it is given in the makefile.
hk> Breakthrough. No more failure to communicate. This is the nub of
hk> the issue ..
>> If that doesn't exist, _then_ it appends the pathname that is given in
>> the makefile onto each entry in VPATH, in order, and looks for that.
hk> VPATH=/u/p/src
hk> install: ../install/scripts/foo
hk> $(INSTALL) ..
hk> Command run in '/u/user/src'. If
hk> /u/user/src/../install/scripts/foo does not exist, I would expect
hk> it to run the command instead of looking into
hk> /u/p/src/../install/scripts/foo ..
Well, that's actually the entire purpose of VPATH: to tell make where
else to look if it can't find the prerequisite by the pathname that the
makefile provides. If you don't want that behavior then you will have
to stop using VPATH. Presumably there's some other reason you need it,
and the above is just an unwanted side-effect?