Ralf Corsepius <rc040203@xxxxxxxxxx> writes: > => If automake doesn't hold what it promises, it's a bug in automake At the very least there is a documentation problem in Automake, because nowhere does it say that you can't have a test named 'test' -- a situation that caused coreutils 'make check' to fork-bomb as described in <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2006-06/msg00033.html>. Perhaps that problem could be worked around by changing all the makefiles that Automake generates, so that they somehow quote every word like "test" and "export" and etc., so that Solaris VPATH 'make' doesn't expand them. However it's not obvious to me how to do that portably and reliably. (And the resulting makefiles would be much harder to read.) If we can't fix the problem, we can at least document that the Automake user can't give files names that match any of the common shell keywords or utility names that Automake generates. My guess is that there would be only a few dozen reserved file names, but the list should be documented in the Automake manual. Also, ideally Automake would diagnose any violations of the file naming restrictions. >> We intend to suggest to end-users to use GNU make for >> VPATH builds; > If you make gmake mandatory for VPATH The new wording isn't intended to make gmake mandatory; it is merely intended as advice to users who are typically not experts in these matters. GNU make is the safest, as a rule, since it gets used the most in practice by Autoconf and Automake users. Other 'make' implementations might also work, but the rules for when they work and when they don't are too complicated to shoehorn into INSTALL. _______________________________________________ Autoconf mailing list Autoconf@xxxxxxx http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/autoconf
