On Thu, 07 Jun 2001 04:04:47 PDT, Simon Gerraty wrote:
>Well I can reproduce this :-) but not sure I can see _why_ its
>bombing.  My machine here is grinding to a halt under backups etc, so
>I'll fix this tomorrow...

OK, I re-built make with the following patch and -DNO_MAKEFLAGS_VAR_CMD
so that I could confirm if this alone is the issue (and get -dx output).

Index: main.c
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/basesrc/usr.bin/make/main.c,v
retrieving revision 1.67
diff -u -p -r1.67 main.c
--- main.c	2001/06/01 20:33:37	1.67
+++ main.c	2001/06/07 15:00:52
@@ -393,7 +393,9 @@ rearg:	while((c = getopt(argc, argv, OPT
 	 */
 	for (argv += optind, argc -= optind; *argv; ++argv, --argc)
 		if (Parse_IsVar(*argv)) {
+#ifndef NO_MAKEFLAGS_VAR_CMD
 			Var_Append(MAKEFLAGS, *argv, VAR_GLOBAL);
+#endif
 			Parse_DoVar(*argv, VAR_CMD);
 		} else {
 			if (!**argv)

That does indeed get things working, but make -dx doesn't provide a
clue as to why.  Diffing the output of the [un]successful runs, does
not show anything different up to the point where the successful build
starts doing (the make command line is the same as below):

+ true ===> Validating dependencies for libslang-1.4.4
+ make OS_VERSION=1.5Q LOWER_OPSYS=netbsd DEPENDS_TARGET=check-depends ECHO_MSG=true IGNORE_FAIL=1 _DEPENDS_TARGET_OVERRIDE=1 install-depends
+ [ 20010307 -lt 20010306 ]
+ pkg=libtool>=1.4.20010219nb6
+ dir=../../devel/libtool
+ PKG_DBDIR=/var/db/pkg /usr/sbin/pkg_info -e libtool>=1.4.20010219nb6
+ true
+ found=
+ [  !=  ]

More investigation needed.  In the meantime, would adding something
like  -xp to dissable the posix behaviour be handy?

Thanks
--sjg