Cshell within make

[Mike Lutz]

In article <431 at bcsaic.UUCP> michaelm at bcsaic.UUCP (michael b maxwell) writes:
>
>A few observed that "make" should look at the SHELL variable.  It doesn't on 
>our system (BSD 4.2), and a note today in news from Matthew P Wiener (of the 
>Math Dept at UCB) says that the line in "make" that checks SHELL is usually 
>commented out in the BSD version.  Anybody know why?

Well, we had "make" look at the SHELL environment variable, and it is a
mixed blessing at best.  The basic problem is that "shell independent"
makefiles are difficult to write once you get beyond the simplest
commands.  If programmer "C", who uses CSH, writes a makefile, little
things like ">&" will creep in to the commands.  When programmer "B", a
Bourne shell user, trys to use the makefile, all hell breaks lose.

So I advocate strict adherence to BSH -- if you really need
CSH, invoke it explicitly (and realize that you may have just destroyed
the portability of your makefile).

Mike Lutz
-- 
Mike Lutz	Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester NY
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