On 20/07/2023, Bruno Haible <br...@clisp.org> wrote: > Karl Berry wrote: >> I just hope those weird-looking %:: rules do not cause trouble with >> other makes. I guess we'll find out. > > I tested the default 'make' of various OSes, before submitting the patch. > Whether some other, rarely-used 'make' implementation has problems with it, > we'll find out.
FWIW I tried the makes on FreeBSD 9, HP-UX 11 and ULTRIX 4.5 and there was no obvious negative effect with the snippet shown in the original post. I expect all the non-GNU implementations are interpreting these lines as ordinary target rules for a funnily-named files with funnily-named prerequisites. So it's not quite right to say it has "no effect", but I think it shouldn't cause any particular problem for packages using portable file names. Cheers, Nick
