Message-ID: <19980613000409.B159@cdata.tvnet.hu>
Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1998 00:04:09 +0200
From: Laszlo Molnar <molnarl AT cdata DOT tvnet DOT hu>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
Cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: directory changing problem with make
References: <19980611013127 DOT D302 AT cdata DOT tvnet DOT hu> <Pine DOT SUN DOT 3 DOT 91 DOT 980611204839 DOT 26077U-100000 AT is>
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In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.980611204839.26077U-100000@is>; from Eli Zaretskii on Thu, Jun 11, 1998 at 08:48:56PM +0300
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On Thu, Jun 11, 1998 at 08:48:56PM +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> On Thu, 11 Jun 1998, Laszlo Molnar wrote:
> > The scripts in the `pod' directory (like pod/pod2html.PL) begin with a
> > chdir to the `pod' directory but they don't chdir back to the base
> > directory at the end. This should be no problem, because make should
> > take care of this, but it seems djgpp's make doesn't do that
> > (make 3.76.1).
> Make on Unix doesn't need to take care of this at all, since current
> directory is local to a process there, so if a program invoked by
> Make chdirs somewhere, it doesn't affect Make itself, and the next
> command starts from the same place the original one did.

Ah, I didn't know this. I thought that Make takes care of this.

[...]
>    foo:
> 	cd foobar
> 	bar file1 file2
> 	baz file3 file3
> Since most DOS Make's don't support multiple commands on the same line
> (DJGPP's port does support it), they don't have any choice but to use
> the above paradigm.  And I didn't want to break this.

You are right. This should work under dos.

> > I hope this could be corrected in the next release (and I will be able
> > to remove my ugly workaround from Perl's makefile).
> Sorry, I don't think it can be corrected, since this is a feature, not
> a bug.  This really is one of the cases where Unix compatibility
> conflicts with DOS/Windows compatibility, and I don't see how this can
> be resolved.

OK, in this case the scripts in perl should be fixed as Make is not
wrong. I'll report this to perl5-porters.

Thanks for your answer, Laszlo

ps: maybe you could add a short note about this feature into
the README of Make