Re: Why are Windows paths broken in make 3.81?

[mwoehlke <mwoehlke at tibco dot com>]

Michael Hirsch wrote:
> Here is a sample Makefile that breaks with Gnu Make 3.81-1 under
> Cygwin, but works fine with Gnu Make 3.80-1.  We have been writing
> these types of Makefiles for years, using both Windows and Cygwin
> tools, and this is the first time Make has ever broken like this.
>
> I see in another thread that this is a known issue, though I don't see
> it in the changelogs for make 3.81.
>
> Was this a deliberate break with backwards compatibility?  It means
> that every single reference to a windows path needs to be wrapped in
> cygpath, which is a huge inconvenience.

Yes. See <http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-announce/2006-07/msg00008.html>. 
If you are using a POSIX-like "OS" (i.e. Cygwin), you should be using 
POSIX paths. That's not an inconvenience, that's called writing a bad 
makefile. If you aren't using Cygwin for the POSIX environment, you 
should be using MinGW.

> Is it broken only on Windows?

That sounds like a silly question... 'are Windows paths only broken on 
Windows?'

> Is this a cywin only bug?  What possible reason could there be to
> introduce this deliberately?

No, as it is not a "bug". However it is specific to Cygwin. See the 
aforementioned announcement. CGF would have to speak to "why" (and I 
would appreciate if he would, just because I am curious :-)), but I 
would guess it is to "encourage" people to use correct (i.e. POSIX) paths.

--
Matthew
Doom doom dooM doo-DooM dOOm DOom doOM... DOOM! -- Gir


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