GNU Make documentation example error

[Niko's ProtonMail Account]

Dear GNU maintainers,

I think there may be a mistake in the section “5.8 Defining Canned Recipes” of the GNU Make manual: https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html#Canned-Recipes.
The examples show the “define” directive followed by an equals sign (“=“), however for me it only works once I remove the equals sign as shown in the section on defining multi-line variables: https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html#Multi_002dLine.
Interestingly, even that section contains an example where the equals sign is used (at the bottom of the section) and it likewise only works once I remove the equals sign.

Best,
Nikolai

[Paul Smith-20]

On Thu, 2021-01-28 at 12:34 +0000, Niko's ProtonMail Account wrote:

> I think there may be a mistake in the section “5.8 Defining Canned
> Recipes” of the GNU Make manual:
> https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html#Canned-Recipes.
>
> The examples show the “define” directive followed by an equals sign
> (“=“), however for me it only works once I remove the equals sign as
> shown in the section on defining multi-line variables:
> https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html#Multi_002dLine.
>
> Interestingly, even that section contains an example where the equals
> sign is used (at the bottom of the section) and it likewise only
> works once I remove the equals sign.

That's not an error.

It just means that you're using an old version of GNU make, that
doesn't support this syntax.

The online documentation documents the current latest release of GNU
make, which is GNU make 4.3.  If you're using an older release of GNU
make you should look on your system to find the documentation
appropriate for whatever version you have.

This is something to keep in mind for anything you see in the manual,
if you want or need to continue to use an older version of GNU make.

[Martin Dorey-2]

Looks like the report in:

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-make/2021-01/msg00016.html

... only this time without any version number.  The answer a couple of weeks ago was:

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-make/2021-01/msg00017.html

(I couldn't find it with Google, even though I remembered it, though I failed to find a robots.txt preventing it from indexing the mailing list archive.)

---

From: Bug-make <bug-make-bounces+martin.dorey=[hidden email]> on behalf of Niko's ProtonMail Account <[hidden email]>
Sent: Thursday, January 28, 2021 04:34
To: [hidden email] <[hidden email]>
Subject: GNU Make documentation example error

 

***** EXTERNAL EMAIL *****

Dear GNU maintainers,

I think there may be a mistake in the section “5.8 Defining Canned Recipes” of the GNU Make manual: https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gnu.org%2Fsoftware%2Fmake%2Fmanual%2Fmake.html%23Canned-Recipes&amp;data=04%7C01%7CMartin.Dorey%40hitachivantara.com%7Cb6e93aa4053748e460a808d8c39fbcce%7C18791e1761594f52a8d4de814ca8284a%7C0%7C0%7C637474438130704342%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&amp;sdata=3x9RGtb5xiMwT%2FA%2BdiEP6ay%2FXyHMHSa9I8%2Fg4NYvyCM%3D&amp;reserved=0.
The examples show the “define” directive followed by an equals sign (“=“), however for me it only works once I remove the equals sign as shown in the section on defining multi-line variables: https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gnu.org%2Fsoftware%2Fmake%2Fmanual%2Fmake.html%23Multi_002dLine&amp;data=04%7C01%7CMartin.Dorey%40hitachivantara.com%7Cb6e93aa4053748e460a808d8c39fbcce%7C18791e1761594f52a8d4de814ca8284a%7C0%7C0%7C637474438130704342%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&amp;sdata=5KRsO6siDx5U%2FgkcYXXxhG6%2BAoJE%2F3xiwdFs%2F%2FfJp0M%3D&amp;reserved=0.
Interestingly, even that section contains an example where the equals sign is used (at the bottom of the section) and it likewise only works once I remove the equals sign.

Best,
Nikolai