Too many files open error with 3.79 not 3.74

[medellre]

Hi all,

Been using a "suite" of makefiles to compile a java 
project for sometime now. When using gnumake version 
3.79.1 built for sparc-sun-solaris2.6, make dies with a: 

"ld.so.1: echo: fatal: libc.so.1: open failed: Too many 
open files"

error, which granted looks a lot like a shell error and 
not necessarily a make error. When using 3.74 make, 
thouh, the project compiles on as it has been since the 
last time any major changes were made to the makefiles.

Anyone know what is different between the version 3.74 
and 3.79 of make that could be causing this problem?

One "supposed" simple fix is to use the ulimit utility to 
increase the file descriptor size. How can this be done 
"inside" of make, though? We have some calls to $(shell) 
throughout the make system. How can we bootstrap spawned 
shells to start with the desired enhanced filedescriptor 
count?

Anyone seen anything of the sort?

Regards,

Rene R. Medellin
Systems Engineer
UBS Warburg
Chicago, USA