Odd effects from setting SHELL?

[Christian Convey]

> >Didn't know about the reasons for preferring /bin/sh.  The guy who
> >originally wrote the makefiles wasn't setting SHELL at all, and his
> >default shell is tcsh.  When I tried to build (my default is bash),
> >the code wouldn't run.
>
> I think you may still be a little confused on this point. No make
> program, including GNU make, EVER pays attention to the user's
> default shell. If you don't override it explicitly on the command
> line or within the makefile, it will use the system shell, period.
>
> -David Boyce

Hmm.  I believe you, but that sounds pretty different about what I was
originally observing.  But I checked what you said and I concede that
it does appear to always be /bin/sh that gets run.

Does that mean that there's no reason at all to put "SHELL=/bin/sh" in
the top of some/all of my makefiles?

(O'Reilly's "Managing Projects with make", p. 64, middle of page, does
recommend putting "SHELL=/bin/sh" in the top of every makefile.)

Thanks,
Christian