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From: Scott Carter <scarter AT emware DOT com>
To: "'cygwin AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com'" <cygwin AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com>
Subject: RE: make --win32 incorrectly handles PATH
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 14:25:29 -0600
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I do in fact have a copy of the make source; I downloaded it the same day I
downloaded the executable. And, personally, I would love to get into the
code and (try to) fix this problem (as well as the one with canned sequence
command echo). But alas, there are some non-trivial obstacles:

a) I've attempted twice to build make.exe on my machine, and failed
miserably. I can't afford to spend days or even hours trying and figure out
how to make it work. I'd also have to figure out how to compile with debug
turned on.

b) I've never learned gdb (I tried to learn command-line gdb once, but gave
up in disgust). I can't afford to spend days or even hours trying and figure
out how to use it.

c) Helping write/maintain FREE software is not what my company hired me to
do. I'm doubtful that I could convince my boss to let me spend the time. I'm
already behind on several high-profile deadlines because of the
detective/diagnostic work I've already done.

d) With my apologies to "FREE" software proponents everywhere, my company
exists to profit from non-free software. If, as an employee of a company
that sells non-free software, I modify the make source, then we distribute
the cygwin1.dll and (modified) make.exe binaries, and our customers use that
make.exe to compile our code on their machines, what implications does that
have vis-a-vis the GPL?? Both for us, and for our customers, who in-turn,
may profit from selling non-free software?? Well, we don't even want to go
there! We don't have much of a legal department. We figured we were safe
distributing the publicly-available binaries, but we don't want to go beyond
that.

If you can help me overcome these obstacles, I may be able to help out (but
no promises). (Chris -- Feel free to contact me directly, if that's more
appropriate.)

Regards,

Scott Carter
Software Engineer

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chris Faylor [mailto:cgf AT cygnus DOT com]
> Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2000 09:41 PM
> To: 'cygwin AT sourceware DOT cygnus DOT com'
> Subject: Re: make --win32 incorrectly handles PATH
> 
> 
> Unfortunately, we really don't have anyone available to investigate make
> problems.  However, you've done extensive amounts of testing and
> produced a voluminous email message so you obviously have an
> analytical mind.
> 
> The only thing you haven't done is download the sources for make and
> see if you can fix this behavior, or at least understand it.
> 
> One of the advantages of a free software project is that you always
> have the sources available for figuring out problems like this.
> 
> I would welcome any patch that you provide to fix this behavior or,
> if you can narrow down the problem to a section of code in make
> that would be good too.
> 
> cgf
> 
> On Wed, Jul 19, 2000 at 07:44:57PM -0600, Scott Carter wrote:
> >I've encountered what seems to be anomalous behavior in the way make
> >(MAKE_MODE=win32) handles the PATH variable (PATH being the environment
> >variable that determines where the OS looks for executables). 

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