Re: Savannah W32 patches... are any OK?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2005 11:25:21 +0100
> From: Alessandro Vesely <address@hidden>
> CC: address@hidden
> 
> > What specific Make-related problems can happen due to all this mess?
> 
> Users may want to detect if MSVC is active without trying all combinations, 
> e.g.
> 
>   MSVC = $(origin MSVCDir)
>   ifeq "$(MSVC)" "undefined"
>    MSVC = $(origin MSDEVDIR)
>    ifeq "$(MSVC)" "undefined"
>     MSVC = $(origin MSDevDir)
>     ifeq "$(MSVC)" "undefined"
>      MSVC = $(origin MSDevdir)
>      # ...
>     endif
>    endif
>   endif

Why is this specific to Make?  These problems exist in any situation
where one wants to detect MSVC-related environment variables; I don't
see why Make should solve it by some magic.

> I added the example about the PATH vs. Path environment variable because
> it may concern the malfunctioning of the $(shell) function in Win9x.

Problems with PATH indeed affect Make, so we should solve them.  But
the solution could be specific to PATH, not something general for all
environment variables.