RE: Newbie problems?

[Andy Voelkel]

>>> Someone suggested this is because GNU make tries to use
>>> a CreateProcess() instead of a System() call.
>
>>What's wrong with CreateProcess?  If the rule's commands don't 
>>involve any features specific to a shell, like wildcards and
redirection,
>>why do we need to use System?

I don't know, specifically. Maybe it is not true at all. What I do know
is that I had a situation where one of my compile tools misbehaved only
when I invoked via GNU make. When I invoked it manually by using an
identical command line to a shell, it would behave. This happened with
two different shells (cmd.exe and 4nt.exe). Also, both types of shell
would behave when I invoked the command using a subshell. Furthermore,
an identical command line invoked via OPUS make also didn't cause
misbehaviour. This mystery is still unsolved. So _something_ is
different about the way GNU make invokes commands, and not in a good
way.

Fortunately, I found that I was also trying to include a non-existent
directory in the include file search path, and solving that problem made
the issue go away. But this was also the case with all the other methods
of command invocation, and the result was benign - except when invoking
the commands via GNU make. So I'm still a bit nervous about the whole
thing. Unsolved mysteries make me nervous.

The good news is that I now have my GNU make working completely. It was
quite a pain to get it working - I had to do quite a few things
differently, and not always in as convenient a way as I was used to. But
it as a pretty complicated makefile - many make programs would have been
incapable of doing it at all.

Thanks everyone!

- Andy Voelkel