Re: exported variables stopped working when migrating make from 4.0 to 4.1

[Paul Smith]

On Thu, 2017-04-13 at 18:49 +0300, Juha Heinanen wrote:
> Perhaps someone can give a hint why exported variables stopped working
> when I upgraded from Debian Jessie, where make is 4.0, to Debian
> Stretch, where make is 4.1.

I can't explain this nor reproduce it.  On my system no matter what
version of GNU make I test with, all the way back to 3.77, I get the
same, expected behavior: the variable is not exported.

It should never be the case that the variable is exported, because
"INSTALL-TOUCH" is not a valid shell variable (which consist of "_" and
alphanumeric characters only and cannot start with a number).  GNU make
does not export variables that are not valid shell variables.

I can't explain why it seems to work for you in Jessie.  It doesn't work
for me in GNU make 4.0 (built on my system from original source).