"make" SHELL variable

daveb at rtech.UUCP daveb at rtech.UUCP
Mon Mar 2 08:23:30 AEST 1987


Many people have complained about or been bitten by the SV make's
importation of the SHELL variable.  It certainly catches me by surprise
once every six months or so.

Therefore, I reluctantly say that this behaviour is _correct_, and that the
wishes that it would ignore SHELL are _wrong_.

If you need to have environment variables visible to make, the only
reasonable thing to do is to take all of them.  The interpretation rule
is now clear:

	Command line > environment > Makefile > default

Creating a list of exceptions would only encourage entropy.   It has
always been easy enough for me to put 

	setenv SHELL /bin/sh

in my .login to mollify make.

-- 
It's hard to type with asbestos gloves.

{amdahl, sun, mtxinu, cbosgd}!rtech!daveb



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