Subject: Re: [PATCH 3/3] Makefile: add commented out 's for Emacs here, too

From: Jonathan Nieder <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2013 15:52:21 -0800

Hi,

Samuel Bronson wrote:
> Markus Heidelberg wrote:

>> In the buildroot project (it consists of Makefiles) there a lots of
>> those workarounds. There was a patch on the list to replace all
>> $(strip $(subst ",,$(FOO))) with $(call strip_dquotes, $(FOO)), but
>> $(call) is not allowed in git for compatibility reasons.
>
> Hmm.  What compatibility reasons, and are they still applicable?

Good question.

  $ git log -1 -S'$(call ' -- Makefile 
  commit 39c015c556f285106931e0500f301de462b0e46e
  Author: Johannes Schindelin <[email-masked]>
  Date:   Sat Feb 18 12:40:22 2006 +0100

      Fixes for ancient versions of GNU make

      Some versions of GNU make do not understand $(call), and have problems to
      interpret rules like this:

      some_target: CFLAGS += -Dsome=defs

      [jc: simplified substitution a bit. ]

      Signed-off-by: Johannes E. Schindelin <[email-masked]>
      Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>

A quick gmane search finds [1], which suggests the "make" where this
problem came up was on IRIX.  I don't have a strong opinion either way
about whether such ancient 'make' is worth supporting (as a practical
matter, it's hard to keep testing and make sure such support still
works).

Would $(call) simplify the makefile much?

Thanks,
Jonathan

[1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/16344
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/16345/focus=16375
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/48968/focus=49117