Bugs in the make program

[russel at ucl-cs.arpa]

From:      Russel Winder <russel at ucl-cs.arpa>


Hello,

Using the archive constructs for make as expoused in the manual there
are at least 3 problems: (Well there are for the 4.1bsd and 2.8bsd
distributions anyway)

1) It crashes if the archive file does not exist. A fix for this problem
   is known thanks to the Ada group at York University.

2) It always picks up the current time as the last modification time for
   archive members.  This means that any file dependendent on an archive
   member will always need updating (compiling or whatever) and also archive
   members never need updating.

3) When using the object archive construct, make baulks over the __.SYMDEF
   file because it's not in object format and then it crashes.

Is there anybody out there who can help with fixes?

Russel Winder
Dept of Computer Science
UCL, London