Building on Solaris, sh problem: empty for loop

[Hubert Feyrer <hubert%feyrer.de@localhost>]

When crosscompiling from Solaris 10 to NetBSD for the netbsd-5 
branch (I haven't checked -current), running a "nbmake-i386 install" in 
src/tests/modules/k_helper gives:

        % ~/cvs/src-5/obj.i386/tooldir/bin/nbmake-i386 install                 #
        install
        
/usr/homes/feyrer/cvs/src-5/obj.i386/destdir//usr/tests/modules/k_helper/k_helper.kmod
===> for d in ; do
        /usr/homes/feyrer/cvs/src-5/obj.i386/tooldir/bin/i386--netbsdelf-install
        -U -M /usr/homes/feyrer/cvs/src-5/obj.i386/destdir/METALOG -D
        /usr/homes/feyrer/cvs/src-5/obj.i386/destdir -h sha1 -N
        /usr/homes/feyrer/cvs/src-5/etc -d $d;  done
===> /usr/xpg4/bin/sh: syntax error at line 1 : `;' unexpected

The error is that the shell can't handle an empty list for the "for" loop.
I've tried to do a "if list not empty" check around it, but the parser 
still trips over it (of course).

Anyone got a smart idea on how to handle this? Make sh a tool?
Anything less intrusive?


 - Hubert