Re: [PING] [PATCH] Escape space in path to $SHELL

[Torbjorn SVENSSON]

Thanks for the reply Paul.

On 2023-07-12 17:19, Paul Smith wrote:
> On Wed, 2023-07-12 at 17:11 +0200, Torbjorn SVENSSON wrote:
> > > * src/job.c (construct_command_argv_internal): Escape space in
> > > $SHELL
>
> Unfortunately this is so simple.  Currently the spaces in the SHELL
> variable are not escaped, and things like this work:
>
>      SHELL := /bin/sh -x
>
> and do what you expect.  Or, perhaps you use a different shell than
> /bin/sh and you add options that way.

I see.

> I fully agree with you that it is not great that we have this, plus
> .SHELLFLAGS, plus poor support for whitespace in pathnames (including
> in the path of the SHELL program) but it is what it is.
>
> My suspicion is that this non-backward-compatible change will break
> some number of makefiles.
>
> I would prefer to avoid doing this until we can make a comprehensive
> and complete set of changes around show shells are managed and invoked,
> so that we don't need to make backward-incompatible changes across
> multiple releases (if they are needed).
>
> In short, the fact that GNU Make doesn't work well with pathnames
> containing whitespace is not limited to targets and prerequisites: it's
> also true for programs that make invokes including the value of SHELL.

From what I can tell, this is possible to work around by quoting the 
path in the makefile (so that the quoted string is parsed by the shell 
and not make).


I have a lot of other things going on right now, but I will return to 
this subject in the future and try to figure out a way that would be 
compatible with the use-case you mentioned above, while still support 
space in the path part.