Bugs in the Manual

[Polak Josef]

Dear Sir or Madam

I needed to learn some basics about the MAKE utility some time ago so I
started reading the Manual
(http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_chapter/make...)
and I must say, it's written so well that I didn't stop until I read the
whole thing (really, even the GNU License :). And because I think I've
found some inconsistencies, possibly bugs, I decided to report them as a
small contribution to the Free Software community.

Here they are:

1. Section 8.8 "The eval function", the program example, line 10 (not
counting empty lines):
Instead "$(1)_OBJ" there should be "$(1)_OBJS".
- This seems like a misprint to me and it could be quite annoying because
that example is quite complicated. I didn't however test it very much so I
might be mistaken (replies welcome). Also, as a beginner I would really
appreciate some more explanation here (e.g. how the code and variables are
expanded when processed), like I said, it's a complicated code.

2. Section 8.10 "The shell function", the last sentence:
I think this is not true. 'echo *.c' doesn't give the same results as the
use of the wildcard function '$(wildcard *.c)' when there are no .c files
present (as was very well explained in section 4.4.3 "The Function
wildcard"). At least not in my system /using bash/.

3. Section 10(.0) "Using implicit rules", the text next to the link to
section 10.6: "How to defining commands for rules which cannot find any."
"define" instead of "defining"
- A misprint, as far as my limited knowledge of English reaches.

4. Section C "Complex Makefile Example", the example program:
I somehow miss the .PHONY denotation for most of the targets here,
even though it was enforced so vehemently in the preceding chapters :) -
this is just my observation and I'm sure the program would work all right
as it is now.

5. Section D "GNU Free Documentation License", (sub)sections 3, 5, 6, 8,
9:
Whenever you refer to some other section of the License (by the words
"section(s) <number>"), the <number> is one less than it should be
(there's 3 when there should be 4, 2 and 3 instead of 3 and 4, etc.). It
doesn't make much sense to me the way it is now but I'm not a lawyer so I
can easily be mistaken here.

That's it, I tried really hard but I didn't find anything more :) As I
already mentioned, I'd really welcome your reply especially if I'm wrong
about something (I'm just a beginner). I however hope that my humble
feedback helps you make MAKE even better (though it's almost perfect as
it is now).

All my best wishes to you and all the Free Software people.

Yours


Joe