From: Masahiro Yamada > Sent: 03 June 2019 11:49 > > To print the pathname that will be used by shell in the current > environment, 'command -v' is a standardized way. [1] > > 'which' is also often used in scripting, but it is not portable. > > When I worked on commit bd55f96fa9fc ("kbuild: refactor cc-cross-prefix > implementation"), I was eager to use 'command -v' but it did not work. > (The reason is explained below.) > > I kept 'which' as before but got rid of '> /dev/null 2>&1' as I > thought it was no longer needed. Sorry, I was wrong. > > It works well on my Ubuntu machine, but Alexey Brodkin reports annoying > warnings from the 'which' on CentOS 7 when the given command is not > found in the PATH environment. > > $ which foo > which: no foo in (/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin) > > Given that behavior of 'which' is different on environment, I want > to try 'command -v' again. > > The specification [1] clearly describes the behavior of 'command -v' > when the given command is not found: > > Otherwise, no output shall be written and the exit status shall reflect > that the name was not found. > > However, we need a little magic to use 'command -v' from Make. > > $(shell ...) passes the argument to a subshell for execution, and > returns the standard output of the command. > > Here is a trick. GNU Make may optimize this by executing the command > directly instead of forking a subshell, if no shell special characters > are found in the command line and omitting the subshell will not > change the behavior. > > In this case, no shell special character is used. So, Make will try > to run the command directly. However, 'command' is a shell-builtin > command. In fact, Make has a table of shell-builtin commands because > it must spawn a subshell to execute them. > > Until recently, 'command' was missing in the table. > > This issue was fixed by the following commit: > > | commit 1af314465e5dfe3e8baa839a32a72e83c04f26ef > | Author: Paul Smith <psmith@xxxxxxx> > | Date: Sun Nov 12 18:10:28 2017 -0500 > | > | * job.c: Add "command" as a known shell built-in. > | > | This is not a POSIX shell built-in but it's common in UNIX shells. > | Reported by Nick Bowler <nbowler@xxxxxxxxxx>. > > This is not included in any released versions of Make yet. > (But, some distributions may have back-ported the fix-up.) > > To trick Make and let it fork the subshell, I added a shell special > character '~'. We may be able to get rid of this workaround someday, > but it is very far into the future. > > [1] http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/command.html > > Fixes: bd55f96fa9fc ("kbuild: refactor cc-cross-prefix implementation") > Cc: linux-stable <stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> # 5.1 > Reported-by: Alexey Brodkin <abrodkin@xxxxxxxxxxxx> > Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada <yamada.masahiro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> > --- > > scripts/Kbuild.include | 5 ++++- > 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) > > diff --git a/scripts/Kbuild.include b/scripts/Kbuild.include > index 85d758233483..5a32ca80c3f6 100644 > --- a/scripts/Kbuild.include > +++ b/scripts/Kbuild.include > @@ -74,8 +74,11 @@ endef > # Usage: CROSS_COMPILE := $(call cc-cross-prefix, m68k-linux-gnu- m68k-linux-) > # Return first <prefix> where a <prefix>gcc is found in PATH. > # If no gcc found in PATH with listed prefixes return nothing > +# > +# Note: the special character '~' forces Make to invoke a shell. This workaround > +# is needed because this issue was only fixed after GNU Make 4.2.1 release. > cc-cross-prefix = $(firstword $(foreach c, $(filter-out -%, $(1)), \ > - $(if $(shell which $(c)gcc), $(c)))) > + $(if $(shell command -v $(c)gcc ~), $(c)))) I see a problem here: command -v foo bar could be deemed to be an error (extra argument). You could use: $(shell sh -c "command -v $(c)gcc") or maybe: $(shell command$${x:+} -v $(c)gcc) David - Registered Address Lakeside, Bramley Road, Mount Farm, Milton Keynes, MK1 1PT, UK Registration No: 1397386 (Wales)