Bug#585495: lintian: discourage use of $_

[Jakub Wilk <jwilk@debian.org>]

Package: lintian
Version: 2.4.1
Severity: wishlist

According to Policy 4.9, "invoking either of `make -f debian/rules 
_args..._' or `./debian/rules _args..._' must result in identical 
behavior." One way to inadvertently violate this policy is to use the $_ 
variable:

$ cat debian/rules 
#!/usr/bin/make -f

test:
	@echo $(_)

$ ./debian/rules 
./debian/rules

$ make -f debian/rules 
/usr/bin/make


Currently ca. 20 packages in the archive incorrectly use constructs like 
$(dir $(_)) to discover directory containing source package (presumably 
in order to implement get-orig-source target). These packages should use 
$(dir $(firstword $(MAKEFILE_LIST))) instead.

--
Jakub Wilk

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