Evaluation of shell functions in recipes

[Stefan Tauner]

hello!

please keep our CC:s because we are not subscribed.
i have found a bug in our (flashrom.org) makefile which may be a bug in
make or its documentation.
attached is a small test case makefile.

the related documentation is
http://www.gnu.org/s/hello/manual/make/Shell-Function.html
and
http://www.gnu.org/s/hello/manual/make/Reading-Makefiles.html

the problem is that the shell function runs before any other commands
(i.e. immediate).
the documentation of the shell function states:
"The commands run by calls to the shell function are run when the
function calls are expanded."
and from the "reading makefiles" section i would say that this should
be deferred i.e. the commands of the recipe should be evaluated
sequently. instead the shell functions are run first:
- 2 is written to the test file
- 4 is written to the test file (overwriting 2)
after that the normal execution starts.
this leads to the output (among other things) of "1 4 4 3 4".
the expected output is "1 <file not found> 2 3 4"

could someone please explain if the observed behavior is "right" and if
we just read the docs wrong, or if they *are* wrong.
thanks!
-- 
Kind regards/Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Stefan Tauner

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