Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2006 18:19:30 -0400
From: Christopher Faylor <cgf-no-personal-reply-please AT cygwin DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Why are Windows paths broken in make 3.81?
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On Fri, Jul 21, 2006 at 05:29:16PM -0600, Michael Hirsch wrote:
>Here is a sample Makefile that breaks with Gnu Make 3.81-1 under
>Cygwin, but works fine with Gnu Make 3.80-1.  We have been writing
>these types of Makefiles for years, using both Windows and Cygwin
>tools, and this is the first time Make has ever broken like this.
>
>I see in another thread that this is a known issue, though I don't see
>it in the changelogs for make 3.81.

Huh?  It was mentioned in the release announcement.  You wouldn't see
the changes in any official make changelogs since the patches were never
in the official version of make.

>Was this a deliberate break with backwards compatibility?

Since it was mentioned in the release announcement, you can safely assume
that it was deliberate.

>It means that every single reference to a windows path needs to be
>wrapped in cygpath, which is a huge inconvenience.

Or, you could investigate the mingw verison of make, as was mentioned in
the release announcement.

Hmm.  A pattern seems to be developing.

>Is it broken only on Windows?  Since ':' is a legal file character in
>unix I wouldn't expect this to  be a problem in the gnu make sources.
>Is this a cywin only bug?  What possible reason could there be to
>introduce this deliberately?

I participate in cygwin because I like providing a linux-like interface
on Windows.  I have no personal interest in standing on my head to
maintain MS-DOS filenames in utilities which do not already support them
out of the box.  By foregoing the pain of forward porting the cygwin
MS-DOS patches, I can release new versions of make with minimal effort.
This benefits all of the people who are using the tool "correctly" with
POSIX-like paths.

(Yes, I know I could have submitted the patches upstream long ago but I
would still end up maintaining this hack regardless)

If this is unacceptable then feel free to stay on the previous version of
make.exe, use the mingw version, or even roll your own.

cgf

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