Re: Odd effects from setting SHELL?

[Philip Guenther]

On 6/21/07, Christian Convey <address@hidden> wrote:
...
> When I just do this:
>    cd /lib_foo; make all
> everything works just fine.
>
> But when I do *this*:
>    cd /lib_foo; make SHELL=/bin/csh all
> things *don't* work fine:

This is, in general, a Bad Idea.  Makefiles should always be written
with /bin/sh syntax for portability and avoid the limitations in csh
syntax.  (For example, a makefile rule written in csh can't loop using
csh's 'foreach', as that requires a real newline.  sh's 'for' doesn't
have that problem.)


> The "%.o: %.cpp" rule in make_lib.mk invokes gcc.  When I don't
> explicitly set SHELL, gcc's current working directory is /src/lib_foo
> (which is what I want.)  When I *do* set SHELL, gcc's working
> directory is my home directory, /home/cjc/.  gcc is then unable to
> find the source code files, and fails.

Your .cshrc (or .tcshrc) is doing 'cd $HOME' or just 'cd'.  "Don't do that".


> P.S. The reason I'm setting SHELL at all is that some of the commands
> within the makefiles need to redirect both stdout and stderr to
> /dev/null.  tcsh and bash have different ways of doing this, so I was
> trying to force the use of some particular shell by our makefiles.

And you reason for not just using the portable /bin/sh syntax is....?


Philip Guenther