mason@primenet.com.au (Geoff Wing) typed:
> Hubert Feyrer <feyrer@rfhs8012.fh-regensburg.de> typed:
> :It seems our make doesn't support $< as synonym for ${.ALLSRC}. 
> :There is a number of (free) software out there that utilizes this feature,
> :which is provided by GNU make. Having this also in our make(1) would help
> :a bit. Thanks!
> 
> Huh?  Sure it supports $< but it's not a synonym for ${.ALLSRC} and it's
> not supposed to be.  RTFM make(1):
> 
>     Local variables
>     [....]
> 	.ALLSRC   The list of all sources for this target; also known as
> 	          `>'.
>     [....]
> 	.IMPSRC   The name/path of the source from which the target is to
> 	          be transformed (the ``implied'' source); also known as 
> 		  `<'.
> 
> Can you give an example of it failing to work?

I think in GNU make, $< is indeed a synonym for ${.ALLSRC}.  When I
made the math/R package, I had to make a lot of identical changes to
makefiles that looked like (pseudo-diff format):

all: $(LIB)
	@$(MKINSTALLDIRS) $(top_builddir)/library/$(pkg)/libs
-	@cp $< $(top_builddir)/library/$(pkg)/libs
+	@cp $(LIB) $(top_builddir)/library/$(pkg)/libs

The original makefiles worked with GNU make, but not with our make(1).
I checked the behaviour of make(1) on a HP-UX system, and their
semantics matched ours.  GNU make seems to be the incompatible one
here.  I ended up sending the R authors the above "fixes" to their
makefiles so as not to depend on GNU make.

--
   Johnny C. Lam
   Department of Statistics             lamj@stat.cmu.edu
   Carnegie Mellon University           http://www.stat.cmu.edu/~lamj/

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