Re: make'ing make-3.18beta4 under mingw/msys - "undefined referenceto `sleep'"

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "Markus Mauhart" <address@hidden>
> Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2005 23:46:15 +0100
> Cc: address@hidden
> 
> ("gmake -j": I still dont know whether '#3678 make -j unnecessarily
> requires an Unix shell' 
> (http://savannah.gnu.org/patch/?func=detailitem&item_id=3678)
> will work for current gmake, built with build_w32.bat ...)

I revisited the patch posted there to allow -j without sh.exe, and I'm
afraid I don't understand the patch.  It does this:

  . add "^()" to sh_chars_dos[] in job.c
  . use '^' to escape special characters such as \ and " in job.c
  . removes the code fragment in main.c that forces job_slots = 1 if
    sh.exe is not available

Can someone please explain which part(s) of this patch solve(s) the
original problem?  For that matter, what shell features are required
to enable -j on Windows, and why?

Paul, it sounds like I'm confused about how -j works and interacts
with the shell--can you please clarify this for me?

In this message:

  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/make-w32/2005-02/msg00089.html

Paul refers to "a bunch of discussion about this one by Eli etc.", but
I cannot find these discussions in the archives.  If they shed some
light on the issue at hand and especially on the suggested patch,
please point me to those discussions, so I could re-read them.

I'm willing to add the code that will enable -j only if the version of
cmd.exe is new enough to support it, but to do that, I need first to
understand the details of the problem and how the suggested patch
tries to resolve it.  TIA.