Re: make problem under freebsd

[Paul Smith]

%% Lorenzo Bettini <address@hidden> writes:

  lb> I've just installed freebsd and tried to build one of my package
  lb> (developed with automake and autoconf) under it.  I noticed that there
  lb> are problems with rules such as

  lb> foo.o: foo.c
  lb>    gcc -c $< -o $@

  lb> in that $< is not expanded...

  lb> is this a known bug?

Depends on what you mean by "bug".  It's not a bug in that it's expected
behavior in some versions of make that automatic variables like $< are
not available in explicit rules: they're only available in
implicit/suffix rules.

It is a "bug" in that this behavior is stupid and broken.  But that's a
problem with the version of make you're using, not automake or autoconf.
On Linux etc. you're using GNU make which doesn't have this problem; I
guess the BSD version of make that comes with FreeBSD etc. does.

  lb> can it be dealt with with automake?  I noticed that automake
  lb> generated rules do not experience this problem...

That's because the people who wrote automake are familiar with this
brand of brain-damaged make and so automake does not generate explicit
rules that use these kinds of automatic variables; they are used only in
implicit rules.

If you are seeing this problem then it is most likely due to customized
make rules added by the package maintainer... if that's you, you should
avoid them; if it's someone else you should file a bug report about
this.

I'm not sure it's worth the complication for automake to try to do
anything about this.

-- 
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 Paul D. Smith <address@hidden>   HASMAT--HA Software Mthds & Tools
 "Please remain calm...I may be mad, but I am a professional." --Mad Scientist
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