Re: if SHELL not set, COMSPEC used - not working?

[Greg Chicares]

[Please break long lines at, say, 72 characters--that would make it
much easier to reply. Thanks.]

On 2009-11-05 00:51Z, Mark Galeck (CW) wrote:
> The GNU Make manual says: 
> 
> "On MS-DOS, if SHELL is not set, the value of the variable COMSPEC
> (which is always set) is used instead."
> 
> This does not seem to work for me?  Why, is this a bug?  

For me, it seems to work as you expect, using a native msw build
of the original make-3.81 sources:

C:\cygwin\home\chicares\tmp>\usr\bin\make -f foobar
ver

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]

> Let me show you - as you can see, make did not call upon the value in
> COMSPEC, but instead went to a Unix shell, which I also have installed,

Could it be that you also have a *nix 'make' installed, which might
be called instead of a native 'make'? If you would add these lines:
        echo $(MAKE)
        echo $(SHELL)
to your default rule, then we'd know for sure.