pwd vs $PWD, bash, cygwin vs Linux

Igor Pechtchanski pechtcha@cs.nyu.edu
Wed May 4 16:34:00 GMT 2005


On Wed, 4 May 2005, Christopher Faylor wrote:

> On Wed, May 04, 2005 at 04:38:08PM +0100, Dave Korn wrote:
> >----Original Message----
> >>From: Peter Farley
> >>Sent: 04 May 2005 16:06
> >
> >>But what if it is *not* your Makefile, but someone else's, e.g.  the
> >>many GNU source packages that expect bash behavior?  Surely you don't
> >>intend that ordinary users (well, OK, anyone compiling from a source
> >>package isn't really "ordinary") should modify every package maintained
> >>by GNU in order to make it under cygwin, do you?
> >
> >HELLO?  CAN ANYONE HEAR ME?  <tap-tap-tap> Testing, testing, is this
> >thing on?  Am I invisible all of a sudden?  Has everyone in the world
> >gone mad except me?  Why is everyone coming out with awkward solutions
> >involving remounting mounts or fiddling with symlinks or hacking around
> >every
> >poorly-written-makefile-containing-nonportable-bashisms-in-the-whole-world?

Sorry, Dave, I should've said "In addition to what Gary and Dave said".

> Maybe because fixing the Makefile means not having to remember to type
> "SHELL=/bin/bash.exe" every time you invoke make?  That's why I didn't
> suggest this in my first response even though I'm a makefile *guru*.
>
> I agree that the mount technique doesn't make a lot of sense (and woe to
> you if you hit CTRL-C at the wrong point) but your "solution" is
> actually a workaround.

The mount technique was a temporary alternative to "cp /bin/bash.exe
/bin/sh.exe".  No more, no less.  I agree in retrospect that it's a bit of
an overkill.

> Of course, you could just put a
>
> SHELL = /bin/bash
>
> in the Makefile but then, gasp!, you'd be modifying the makefile and
> shirley you don't intend every person in this space time continuum to do
> that.

Frankly, CGF is absolutely right -- any Makefile that uses bash-specific
features in its commands should have SHELL=/bin/bash at the top.  Period.

> I guess if your goal is to just build a package and forget about it,
> then using the command line is acceptable.  You just have to remember to
> do that again, when you build the package in six months.  Or, maybe you
> could make a shell alias!  Yeah, that's the ticket.

	Igor
-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
      |\      _,,,---,,_		pechtcha@cs.nyu.edu
ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		igor@watson.ibm.com
     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski, Ph.D.
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

"The Sun will pass between the Earth and the Moon tonight for a total
Lunar eclipse..." -- WCBS Radio Newsbrief, Oct 27 2004, 12:01 pm EDT

--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/



More information about the Cygwin mailing list