[bug #59399] Expanding implicit macros in gmake (enhancement request)

[Jörg Schilling]

Follow-up Comment #2, bug #59399 (project make):

Well, it may be a bit confusing because I am maintaining two make
implementations. 

1)  The program smake, I wrote in the early 1980s and that is still
maintained.

2)  The SunPro Make program that Sun made OSS on my request in December 2006.

SunPro Make currently does not print warnings related to
these implicit macros, smake however does.

Smake prints these warnings because the internal structure of
smake makes it impossible to expand the implicit macro $< in
explicit rules.

Smake prints this warning:

smake: WARNING: requesting implicit dynmac '$<' for explicit target 'all'
smake: WARNING: expanding implicit dynmac  '$<' to ''
smake: WARNING: Current working directory:  '/home/joerg/cmd/smake', Makefile
'Mw'
smake: WARNING: requesting implicit dynmac '$*' for explicit target 'all'
smake: WARNING: expanding implicit dynmac  '$*' to 'all'
smake: WARNING: Current working directory:  '/home/joerg/cmd/smake', Makefile
'Mw'


The warning is printed by smake since more than 15 years. For
this reason, I do not remember the exact difference with
expanding these macros between gmake and SunPro Make. I
remotely remember that the differences appear with : vs. ::
type explicit targets.

Could you explain how these implicit macros are expanded in gmake?

For SunPro Make, I am currently thinking about whether I
should add similar warnings as in smake in case that the
Makefile is of unknown origin. SunPro Make currently
evaluates the environment SUN_MAKE_COMPAT_MODE and allows
to switch it's behavior based on that environment.

In theory, SunPro Make could be enhanced in a way that it
prints the related warning depending on thether this
make macro was not seen before.

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