On Fri, 2014-01-31 at 16:55 +0200, Eli Zaretskii wrote: > > An option as command line argument, or as a special target as the > > original patch did? > > The former, as Paul objected to the latter.
I didn't object, per se. I just prefer my tools to DTRT in all cases without me having to use any magical incantations to make it happen :-). My question, or _challenge_ if you like, is whether we can find a way to know, without any hints from the user, whether a given command line will work properly for /bin/sh -c in Windows, or if it needs to use a batch file. It seems, from my lofty vantige point of knowing virtually nothing about it, that this is a solveable problem. If we can try to write down (in text) the rules for when we would or would not be able to use /bin/sh -c, I would think it would quickly become clear if we can solve it or not. As for whether we use a command line option or makefile target, I think probably the makefile target is probably more appropriate. In general I like to use command line options to control user preferences which do not have direct impacts on the build, so if you ran the same build with different flags it would still work, just with different behaviors. But for things which will cause the makefile to not work properly if not specified, those things should be embedded into the makefile itself: I don't want it to be the case that you always have to remember to give a particular command line option or your build will break! _______________________________________________ Bug-make mailing list Bug-make@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-make