Re: [Automake-NG] [FYI 4/6] general: assume '#' comment in make recipes are ok

[Stefano Lattarini]

On 05/25/2012 08:57 AM, Akim Demaille wrote:
> 
> Le 25 mai 2012 à 02:16, Stefano Lattarini a écrit :
> 
> I don't understand how this:
> 
>> The Autoconf manual (2.69) reports:
>>
>>    Some make implementations treat anything starting with a tab as
>>    a command for the current rule, even if the tab is immediately
>>    followed by a '#'.  The make from Tru64 Unix V5.1 is one of them.
> 
> can be connected to code like this:
> 
>> -    cat $(srcdir)/config.hin ;: For debugging.
>> -    cat config.h             ;: Likewise.
>> +    cat $(srcdir)/config.hin # For debugging.
>> +    cat config.h             # Likewise.
> 
> ?
> 
> In the present case, this is a shell comment, not a Make comment.
> 
> 
Hmm.... right.  The fact was that we were using the ";:" trick to
prevent some fringe make implementation (AIX? IRIX? don't remember)
from spuriously erroring out on usages like "find . -type d # comment"
with "find: #: No such file or directory", probably because that make
somehow decided to bypass the shell and go directly for fork+exec
while executing the recipe.  GNU make doesn't mess up this way
obviously, so while writing the patch (and after having written
the commit message) I thought I could cleanup such usages as well.

A poor call, since that has caused the commit message to get out
of sync with the actual commit diff :-(  No big deal in this case
(although certainly annoying), but something to be more careful
in the future.

Thanks,
  Stefano