[bug #42270] Make needs to canonicalise paths

[Paul D. Smith]

Update of bug #42270 (project make):

              Item Group:                     Bug => Enhancement            
           Triage Status:                    None => Medium Effort          

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Follow-up Comment #1:

Every version of make I've ever encountered has always worked this way: they
all use string comparison to match up prerequisite and target names, not some
intrinsic of the operating system (absolute path, device/inode number, etc.) 
I've checked the POSIX spec and it seems to imply this behavior although I
don't see a specific requirement.

In any event, a change like this will need a lot of thought and consideration
of possible ramifications.  For example, what about files which are symbolic
links to each other?  Should make be able to determine that?  Using absolute
paths may or may not be able to tell the difference, depending on the
algorithm used to compute the absolute path.  What about a file with two
different paths hard-linked?

In your example you use $(abspath ...) but that's not necessarily always
correct.  Also, how would something like this interact with VPATH?  It's
obviously wrong to apply $(abspath ...) to targets that make is intended to
locate via VPATH lookup.

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