1358477 - A colon ':' in the path name breaks builds with an unrelated client.mk error.

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Firefox Build System :: General, defect)

Description

[Guillaume Maudoux [:layus]]

If the build tree is in a directory that contains a colon, it wont build.

** Showtime! **

> $ echo $PWD
> /home/layus/projects/silly:colon/mozilla-central
>  
> $ ./mach build
> 0:00.74 /usr/bin/make -f client.mk -s
> 0:01.08 client.mk:195: *** target pattern contains no '%'.  Stop.
> 0:01.11 0 compiler warnings present.
> 
> $ cat -n client.mk | grep "195" -C 5  
>   190	
>   191	ifdef WANT_MOZCONFIG_MK
>   192	# For now, only output "export" lines and lines containing UPLOAD_EXTRA_FILES
>   193	# from mach environment --format=client.mk output.
>   194	MOZCONFIG_MK_LINES := $(filter export||% UPLOAD_EXTRA_FILES% %UPLOAD_EXTRA_FILES%,$(MOZCONFIG_OUT_LINES))
> **195	$(OBJDIR)/.mozconfig.mk: $(TOPSRCDIR)/client.mk $(FOUND_MOZCONFIG) $(call mkdir_deps,$(OBJDIR)) $(OBJDIR)/CLOBBER
>   196		$(if $(MOZCONFIG_MK_LINES),( $(foreach line,$(MOZCONFIG_MK_LINES), echo '$(subst ||, ,$(line))';) )) > $@
>   197	ifdef MOZ_CURRENT_PROJECT
>   198		echo export MOZ_CURRENT_PROJECT=$(MOZ_CURRENT_PROJECT) >> $@
>   199	endif
>   200	

The problem comes at that line, because something gets expanded, and make sees a line with two colons, which is not valid (except when a '%' is to be found somewhere apparently...).
http://stackoverflow.com/a/37333335 was enligthening.

Now it seems that this is fundamentally broken, and cannot be made to work correctly, as per http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-make/2004-10/msg00010.html.

So this is basically a "wontfix", but I wanted to share this knowledge, and share this astonishing shortcoming of gmake.