Re: Problems with GNU make in Windows 7 (64-bit)

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Rob Juergens <address@hidden>
> Date: Thu, 5 May 2011 09:36:01 -0700
> 
> In Windows 7 on a 64-bit machine, the development system (MS Visual Studio) 
> is, by default, installed into a directory named "Program Files (x86)".  
> Apparently, the present of the "(x86)" in the name is causing the variable 
> expansion routines to recurse forever.

Are you sure it's the variable expansion routines that infloop?  Did
you step through the code with a debugger?

> In my makefile, I have the line:
> 
> x86 := $(strip $(shell ls -d "$(SystemDrive)/Program Files (x86)" 2>nul))
> 
> Sometimes, make just crashes (with  a stack overflow from recursive calls), 
> and other times, it bails with the message "_main: memory allocation error 
> during startup" (which is a Windoze error message).

This is Savannah bug #23922.  It rears its ugly head when there's a
combination of "()" and redirection in the command that Make needs to
run.  See

  https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?23922

I will try to look into this.  In the meantime, perhaps you could work
around this by not using sh.exe (remove it from PATH or rename it).

Btw, is your Make built with GCC or with the Microsoft compiler?