Debian bug report logs - #864
make gets MAKEFLAGS wrong

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From: iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk (Ian Jackson)
To: jdassen@WI.LeidenUniv.NL (J.H.M.Dassen),
        Debian bugs submission address <debian-bugs@pixar.com>
Subject: Bug#864: Re: smail-3.1.29-1: ambiguous switch for 'make'
In-Reply-To: <199506131138.NAA17674@sp2156a.wi.leidenuniv.nl>
References: <199506131138.NAA17674@sp2156a.wi.leidenuniv.nl>

J. H. M. Dassen writes ("smail-3.1.29-1: ambiguous switch for 'make'"):
> it looks like one of the options given to make while building smail-3.1.29-1
> is ambiguous when using make-3.73, resulting in a failing build.
> 
> While making the dependencies, make is called with '--wn'; make --help 
> shows no option matching this. 
> Options starting with '--w' are: '--what-if=FILE' and 
> '--warn-undefined-variables'.
> 
> Could you disambiguate this for the next release?

This is a bug (Debian #864) in GNU make's handling of MAKEFLAGS.  The
option should have been -wn with only a single hyphen.

I'm using my own copy of make 3.70 in /usr/local/bin.

This should be fixed urgently, as currently a Debian user can't
(re)compile the Smail package.

Ian.

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Date: Mon, 8 May 95 01:54 BST
From: iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk (Ian Jackson)
To: Debian bugs submission address <debian-bugs@pixar.com>
Subject: make gets MAKEFLAGS wrong

Package: make
Version: 3.73-1

When trying to build smail (3.1.29.1-11, source code will be on
ftp.cps soon) I get:
 make: option `--w' is ambiguous
numerous times, with usage messages.

I seem to remember this being due to an incompatible and broken change
in the semantics of MAKEFLAGS.

Please can this change be reversed, or the old `make' restored.

In the meantime I'll have to build Smail with my old installation's
make.

Ian.