[bug #47150] Silently fails on mistyped function names

[Manoj Srivastava]

URL:
  <http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?47150>

                 Summary: Silently fails on mistyped function names
                 Project: make
            Submitted by: srivasta
            Submitted on: Sun 14 Feb 2016 10:35:50 PM CST
                Severity: 3 - Normal
              Item Group: Bug
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
             Assigned to: None
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
       Component Version: 4.1
        Operating System: Any
           Fixed Release: None
           Triage Status: None

    _______________________________________________________

Details:

Hi, 
This was reported by a debian user. Please retain a CC to
address@hidden so that the Debian BTS has a copy of your
input. 

make ignores it when an undefined function is used in a makefile, and just
substitutes the empty string for the function call.  Instead, it really,
really should fail and report a faulty makefile.  Especially because there are
no user-defined functions so this unfriendly behavior doesn't even buy
anything in flexibility.

I have just spent an hour or so debugging a 20 line makefile.  I used the
dirname function in one of my rules, only I forgot that for make it is spelled
just $(dir ...) and not ($dirname ...) .  I was at the point of throwing
something at my computer, and I'm exaggerating only a tiny little bit.

Exemplar
########################################
all:
        @echo $(dirname $(shell pwd))
########################################
Selently returns nothing.


Manoj




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