Re: Mass bugfiling potential: 'rules' with space
On Thu, Oct 10, 2002 at 01:51:52AM -0600, Joel Baker wrote:
> Some number of debian/rules files invoke make as:
>
> #! /usr/bin/make -f
> ^--- trailing space
> rather than
>
> #! /usr/bin/make -f
>
> While this does not break things on Linux, it *does* cause breakage on
> NetBSD, due to differences in the script handlers. So far, the number
> of packages isn't terribly high - but it's a couple, in under a hundred
> packages, which (if it holds - no good way to tell) is potentially a few
> hundred packages, before all is said and done.
You might want to check and see if this does anything to perl and python.
That could cause much larger headaches.
> Is there anything which will break if the space is *not* there? Or, for
> that matter, is there anything formally stating that it is, or isn't,
> allowed to be there? While it is theoretically possible to adjust the
> script handling under NetBSD, I really don't relish the idea of trying to
> do it and make sure that it won't break; however, if the concensus is that
> this really needs to be fixed at the OS level, I'll see what I can figure
> out.
>
> (For what it's worth, the failure mode is 'make: : No such file or
> directory'; I think NetBSD is seeing the extra space, and adding an empty
> string to the argument list, since that is what is after the space).
I strongly suggest that you confirm this, and determine exactly what
is happening.
If it's true, you may be able to hack make to ignore a blank argument
after -f. That would avoid having to touch the kernel. I'd also
report the bug to NetBSD, and hope they fix it upstream.
FWIW, now I have to go check and see if FreeBSD does this too. :(
---Nathan
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