RE: [lmi] fork failed: no error [464]

[Boutin, Wendy]

Greg Chicares wrote:
> 
> Using an ancient native msw port of ash for portability testing
> (it's the closest thing I've found to the original bourne shell),
> I ran into this problem. It occurs only when invoking 'wx-config'
> this way:
>   wx_config_libs     := $(shell $(wx_config_script) --libs)
> but not this way:
>   wx_config_libs     := $(shell sh -c "$(wx_config_script) --libs")

That change causes us to not compile skeleton. In 'workhorse.make'
I restored:

  wx_config_cxxflags := $(shell $(wx_config_script) --cxxflags)
  wx_config_libs     := $(shell $(wx_config_script) --libs)

and can now compile skeleton as expected. That's the only change we 
had to make to get this to work. I understand you were doing portability 
testing when you reported this issue on the mailing list, but I don't 
understand why you changed it and how your change can still work for 
you if you're using the same shell as us. It could be that I don't 
understand the portability aspect of this, but I don't feel this is
truly complete until we can understand what this change really is 
and why it made a difference.
 
> I would guess that it has something to do with other things in the
> environment, because I found that passing a definition with one
> character more or less makes the difference between success and
> failure:
> 
>   C:/lmi/src/skeleton[0]$make wx_config_check 
> build_type=so_test foo=w123456
>   Omitted from wx-config --cxxflags:
> 
>   Omitted from wx-config --libs:
>   -Wl,--subsystem,windows -mwindows

Reverting your change gives me the same output:

    c:/opt/lmi/src/skeleton[0]$make wx_config_check
    Omitted from wx-config --cxxflags:

    Omitted from wx-config --libs:
    -Wl,--subsystem,windows -mwindows
 
>   C:/lmi/src/skeleton[130]$make wx_config_check 
> build_type=so_test foo=w1234567
>   
> c:/wx20060323/wxWidgets/gcc342/lib/wx/config/msw-ansi-debug-2.
> 7: fork failed: no error [464]
>   make.EXE: *** [../build/skeleton/msw_generic/gcc/so_test] Error 130
> 
> Using 'make -d', and comparing other uses of make's $(shell)
> function, I saw a difference in the first parameter of
> CreateProcess():
> 
>   gcc_version = $(shell $(CXX) -dumpversion)
>   
> CreateProcess(C:\MinGW-20050120\bin\g++.exe,/MinGW-20050120//b
> in/g++ -dumpversion,...)
> 
>   wx_config_libs     := $(shell $(wx_config_script) --libs)
>   CreateProcess(NULL,sh 
> C:\wx20060323\wxWidgets\gcc342\wx-config --libs,...)
>   
> c:/wx20060323/wxWidgets/gcc342/lib/wx/config/msw-ansi-debug-2.
> 7: fork failed: no error [464]
> 
> whereas the rewritten $(shell) command above does pass a
> non-null first parameter:
> 
>   wx_config_libs     := $(shell sh -c "$(wx_config_script) --libs")
>   CreateProcess(C:\usr\bin\sh.exe,sh.exe -c "sh -c 
> \"/wx20060323/wxWidgets/gcc342/wx-config --libs\"",...)
> 
> It works, so I've committed this strange change to cvs. While I
> dislike such voodoo, I'm not inclined to spend more time on it
> unless this thing crawls out of its grave again.

This comment makes me think you were pretty apprehensive to making 
such a change; now I'd claim that this thing crawled out of its 
grave.

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