Re: why doesn't vpath %.c subdir// work?

[David Boyce]

On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 6:45 PM, Mark Galeck (CW) <address@hidden> wrote:
> Right, there is another solution, but it involves more markers, like I said, 
> I am now using .\.\.\ because I can't use \\ (or //).  But I don't like it 
> because it creates more clutter on already busy compile lines.  So I would 
> prefer if // worked.

Why not use case as the marker, as in \some\path\MARKER\blah\blah? It
wastes even fewer characters than \\, and it won't confuse any users
because nobody has, or should have, any expectations regarding case in
a windows environment.

> Thank you Philip, you are very graciously trying to solve my problem.  It is 
> very nice of you, no sarcasm, but that is not what I want.  I apologize if it 
> sounds arrogant.  I come to this group usually because of some small sticky 
> point, which I boil down as much as possible;  the big problem which contains 
> several such sticky points, I will solve myself (actually already have).  I 
> would not want to busy anybody with thinking about my big problems.

What strikes me as the basic source of the discord here is that GNU
make is an open source project and at some point people are expected
to UTSL. In this case it's pretty clear that though your use case is
legitimate and creative, no one else has ever particularly cared about
keeping multiple consecutive slashes; most people would just use
$(realpath) and call it done. It's pretty much axiomatic that if you
have an open source project with a bug which only one person cares
about, it's up to that person to supply the fix. ISTM that an hour or
so in the debugger would locate the source of the problem even for
someone who doesn't know the insides of GNU make well. Or perhaps
compare the outputs of "make -d" with and without the double slashes.

-David Boyce