Re: Bug: make fails to execute .BAT files with space in the path, with SHELL=cmd.exe

[Erik Carstensen]

On Sun, Apr 28, 2013 at 7:26 PM, Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> wrote:

 

Thanks for the report.  (Any real reason to use batch files whose
names include whitespace?)

Yes. I'm working on a make-based system for building add-on modules to a certain program. The build system is distributed as a Windows installer, and it often ends up installed under directories like C:\Program Files\. So my users are hit by this bug if their module's makefile runs one of the build system's bat files.

Previously we ducked the entire problem of having whitespaces in paths by rewriting filenames to an equivalent space-free 8.3 form, but this is getting unfeasible since the 8.3 filename support tends to be turned off by default in newer Windows versions.

The problem only happens when make attempts to run the command directly (short-circuiting cmd.exe). So one workaround might be to quote spaces with double quotes instead of backslashes when invoking commands.