RE: Why SHELL defaults to sh.exe

[Christian Jullien]

Dear Eli,

>From your explanation, it seems there is something broken at least with
make-4.3. Here is what I have done:
cmd> tar xvzf make-4.3.tar.gz    <= unmodified from Git
cmd> cd make-4.3
cmd> build_w32.bat
...
.\WinRel build succeeded.
        1 file(s) copied.
        1 file(s) copied.

Reduce Windows env down to the minimum:

set Path=C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS
set INCLUDE=
set LIB=
set SHELL=
set HOME=

Looking for sh of bash somewhere

cmd>sh
'sh' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
cmd>bash
'bash' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

cmd>WinRel
cmd>dir *.exe
 Volume in drive F is New Volume
 Volume Serial Number is 12C9-E1B4

 Directory of F:\make-4.3\WinRel

2020-01-23  15:39           336,384 gnumake.exe

Now the test:

cmd>type Makefile
all:
        @echo $(SHELL)
cmd>.\gnumake
sh.exe    <=== Argl!!



-----Original Message-----
From: Eli Zaretskii [mailto:address@hidden] 
Sent: Thursday, January 23, 2020 15:33
To: address@hidden
Cc: address@hidden
Subject: Re: Why SHELL defaults to sh.exe

> From: "Christian Jullien" <address@hidden>
> Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2020 11:27:53 +0100
> 
> I wonder why Windows native gnumake.exe defaults to sh.exe ?

Historical reasons.

> Building gnumake.exe with build_w32.bat (which defaults to cl.exe) still
uses sh.exe while IMHO it should
> default to cmd.exe

It only defaults to sh.exe if it finds one on PATH.  If you are using
native Windows tools, why would you have sh.exe on PATH? there are no
known good native Windows ports of any Unixy shell, AFAIK, only broken
ones.

If you don't have sh.exe on PATH, GNU Make on Windows will use cmd.exe.

> In an ideal world, I should be able to get for example all .c source files
with:
> 
>  
> 
> FILES   = $(shell dir /b *.c)

In GNU Make, you have the $wildcard function instead, so no need to
use the shell in this case.