Mail Archives: djgpp/1996/11/17/03:04:55
On Wed, 13 Nov 1996, Tor Sjowall wrote:
> >The reason is compatibility with other Unix Make's. If Make accepts a
> >space, it lets you produce Makefiles that won't be useful with other
> >versions of Make on Unix. On the other hand, *all* versions of Make,
> >including those which come with DOS compilers, support a TAB as the first
> >character.
>
> It's true that 'spaced' makefiles would not work with Unix make programs.
> But then, the makefile from dos wouldn't work anyway because of the CR+LF
> incompatibility.
That is why you should always run your Makefiles through DTOU before
uploading archives that should support both DOS and Unix. Most Unix
systems have `dos2unix' program that will do that, so it's not too much of
a problem even if you forget. In contrast, the spaces thing is much more
difficult to spot and correct.
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