Re: win32 paths with spaces

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 23:22:01 -0500
> From: Greg Chicares <address@hidden>
> 
> When someone asks for make to support paths with embedded spaces,
> the 'SFN' alias is often suggested as a workaround. It may seem to
> solve the problem, until
>   c:\compatibility programs\bin\foo.o
> turns out to be
>   c:\compat~1\src\foo.c
> on one computer but
>   c:\compat~2\src\foo.c
> on another

It is still the only work-around, and works in the vast majority of
cases.  Provided the user knows about this caveat, I don't see any
reason why I shouldn't tell about it.

The alternative is to rename the files, but in some cases, such as
standard Windows directories or organizational constraints beyond the
programmer's control, that cannot be done.  Instead of giving up,
using the suggested work-around seems like a way out.

And if that's not good enough, and the compat~1 vs compat~2 thing is
the problem, one could _compute_ the short alias with something like

TEST_DIR=$(shell dir /x "c:/" | gawk "/TESTDI~/ {print $$5}")

and then use it as in

$(TEST_DIR)/foo.exe: $(TEST_DIR)/foo.c

This should work for any machine, I think.