Re: Make 4.4 on Win10 behaving oddly

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2023 16:43:48 +1200
> From: Gary Turner <g@elizr.com>
> 
> Sorry if this isn't the right place to ask - I've been reading this list 
> for years, and it was an easy option :)
> I've been getting (copying) updated make.exe files from various 
> installations as I set up new machines over the years.
> I usually run make manually from a command prompt.
> I've been doing this for years with no changes to anything else but I'm 
> seeing some oddness with make 4.4.1 (Built for x86_64-pc-msys) that I 
> got from a ruby install.
> If I run make on my old makefiles, it looks to me  like it is starting a 
> shell instead of running the commands.
> It prints the necessary make command, and "Microsoft Windows[Version 
> 10.0...] and (c) Microsoft... and then a command prompt.
> The command window  title then shows ...\cmd - make. If I type exit, 
> (sometimes I have to Ctr-C first)  I get back to my original prompt.
> I guess something is going wrong with my shell selection, but I've never 
> had to manually set it before.
> I copied over an older 4.1 (Built for Windows32) which I don't recall 
> the source of, and that works fine.
> Is there an easy solution to this?

Please begin by showing the minimal Makefile which exhibits the above
behavior with Make 4.4.

In general, the x86_64-pc-msys target is not a build of Make you
should be running from cmd.exe, nor should you expect it to behave
like a native MS-Windows port of Make.  That build is for MSYS, and is
supposed to be run from Bash in order to execute Unix-style Makefiles.
So, for example, it doesn't know enough about cmd.exe shell rules, and
generally behaves like a Unix build of Make.  So it is better to avoid
it on MS-Windows, except when you are running Posix-style configure
script and the Makefiles it produces.

A native Windows build of Make 4.4.1 is available here:

  https://sourceforge.net/projects/ezwinports/files/

This is a 32-bit build (but will run on 64-bit Windows); if you want a
64-bit build instead, look in the MSYS2 project for a build thaat ends
with "-mingw64", not with "-msys".