I admit I didn't read this old thread or example makefiles closely so I may be missing subtleties but a few responses:
> Replacing ?= with := (immediate assignment, computed once at top-make parse time) avoids the problem at the cost of breaking command-line variable override. This sounds like a common misunderstanding. *All* variable types are overridable at the command line. People often think they need ?= to enable this but := overrides the same (of course the resulting variable is now simply expanded which is a possible consideration). > (the lines below "$(PHASES):" and "inner-%:" must begin with a TAB) In future example makefiles you can use ; to disambiguate the tab issue: foo: bar; recipe > default_TOP := $(shell pwd) I've never understood this pattern. Make has no chdir operator so each individual make process is trapped in its starting cwd (this is a feature). Of course recipes including recursive make can change their cwd but that's the only place it can change and it's a new process. Therefore using $(shell pwd) seems generally a waste of an exec since it's available as $(CURDIR). I understand there might be an interest in tracking prior working dirs in a recursive-make process tree, but in any given make process can there be a difference between $(shell pwd) and $(CURDIR)? David On Thu, May 21, 2026 at 2:38 AM Basile STARYNKEVITCH < [email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, 2026-05-20 at 18:06 -0400, Paul Smith wrote: > > On Wed, 2026-05-20 at 15:09 +0000, Gunter Woytowitz wrote: > > > will this change be available as an update in the ubuntu resolute > > > repos ? > > > > I have no way of knowing the answer to that: it's up to the Ubuntu > > maintenance team. The GNU project is not involved at all. > > > > However, GNU make 4.4 is easily compilable (e.g. as > /usr/local/bin/make) on Ubuntu or Debian systems. So building your GNU > make could be a solution > > -- > > Basile STARYNKEVITCH > <[email protected]> > 8 rue de la Faïencerie > http://starynkevitch.net/Basile/ > 92340 Bourg-la-Reine > https://github.com/bstarynk > France > https://github.com/RefPerSys/RefPerSys > https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0908-5250 > >
