make importing SHELL

Chris Torek chris at mimsy.UUCP
Tue Sep 27 15:45:50 AEST 1988


In article <128 at cetia.UUCP> chris at cetia.UUCP (Chris Bertin) writes:
>If 'make' had been modified to get its shell from a different variable (say
>'MAKESHELL', for example), no existing makefiles would have been broken and
>you would still be able to use a different shell. It is a misfeature.

Right.

More generally, the problem is that the environment variable $SHELL has
the meaning `user's preferred shell', and Makefile commands have the
meaning `hand this to the shell the Makefile says to use'.  When the
two do not conflict, things work out, but the two *do* conflict, and
too often.

$SHELL and the shell-to-be-used-by-make are simply two different things.
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris at mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris



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