Make system fails if path to checkout includes a space

[schmie]

Reported by jamespjh on 10 Oct 2011 16:45 UTC
"binary operator expected" is error message.

Due to code like this being run via make's $shell:

rd=/home/jamespjh/.jenkins/jobs/HemeLB development/workspace/Code; top=$rd; until [ -r $top/Rules.top ]; do oldtop=$top; cd ..; top=pwd; if [ $oldtop = $top ]; then top=$rd; break; fi; done; echo $top"

[schmie]

Modified by hywel on 13 Oct 2011 11:40 UTC

[schmie]

Comment by jamespjh on 13 Oct 2011 14:06 UTC
This is going to be difficult. GNU make is just rubbish at handling paths with spaces.

See http://www.cmcrossroads.com/ask-mr-make/7859-gnu-make-meets-file-names-with-spaces-in-them

I've tried throwing some quotes around and it's proving not easy.

I recommend we consider moving to a more advanced build system such as rake, scons, maven, or ant.

We could try to make it display a sensible error message instead of the current unreadable noise, but I don't think this is a priority for now, given it turns out not to be easy.

I would like to raise the topic of using a more sophisticated build system for 0.2, and decide not to fix this for 0.1.

Suggest triage to 0.2

[schmie]

Modified by jamespjh on 20 Oct 2011 10:41 UTC

[schmie]

Comment by jamespjh on 27 Oct 2011 15:43 UTC
This is too annoying. Won't fix this in the make system. Will fix as part of a future better build system.