gmake troubles under Win XP -- opening shells instead of executing commands

[Stan Brown]

Windows XP Pro with SP2

GNU Make version 3.79.1, by Richard Stallman and Roland McGrath.
Built for i386-pc-msdosdjgpp


Since I changed from Win 98 to Win XP, gmake has been behaving in 
all sorts of flaky ways. I'd be very grateful if somebody can tell 
me what is wrong.

(One thing that makes this hard to diagnose is that the output of 
"make -n" is, amazingly, _not_ the commands that make actually 
executes without the "-n". It sure would be nice if there were some 
way to find out what commands MAKE is actually executing.)

I append my makefile to this message. Here's the problem:

When I run it with "make 4INDEX.HTM -n" it correctly displays the 
commands that I expect to see, namely 
>       ver
>       echo f:\ors\code\makesub ./ 4INDEX.HTM ./ 4INDEX.HTM ./4.DEF 4INDEX.0
>       f:\ors\code\makesub ./ 4INDEX.HTM ./ 4INDEX.HTM ./4.DEF 4INDEX.0

But when I type "make 4INDEX.HTM" without the -n, things go flaky.

(a) MAKE opens a new command shell and then leaves me with a user 
prompt.

(b) The "ver" command apparently never gets executed. (I'm not 100% 
sure, because the expected output of "ver" is the same as the first 
line displayed by the cmmand processor when it opens a new 
instance. But if "ver": were executed I'd expect to see that line 
twice, and I see it only once.)

(c) I type "exit" to leave the comamnd shell, and MAKE opens 
_another_ command shell after that one closes.

(d) I type "exit" again, and after this second command shell closes 
MAKE this time executes _some_ command, but neither the "echo" 
command nor the "makesub" command; the symptom is that I see "bad 
command or file name". I know that "makseub" itself is okay because 
when I copy the output of "make 4INDEX.HTM -n" and paste it to the 
command prompt, "makesub" runs just fine and updates the 4INDEX.HTM 
file.

(e) As mentioned above, "make -n" doesn't actually show the 
commands that make executes without the "-n".

I'm completely at a loss. I'll be happy to provide additional 
information or run additional tests if someone can help me track 
down and ultimately fix this problem.

==================================================================
.SUFFIXES:
MAKESUB := $(OC)\makesub
SRCDIR    := ./
TOPDIR    := ./
USRDIR    := $(TOPDIR)
TOPMAIN := $(TOPDIR)0.HTM
USRMAIN := $(USRDIR)4INDEX.HTM
USROBJ := \
    $(USRDIR)4CSS.HTM \
    $(USRDIR)4EXCEL.HTM \
    $(USRDIR)4MOZ.HTM \
    $(USRDIR)4PEGASUS.HTM \
    $(USRDIR)4WORD.HTM \
    $(USRDIR)4WINXP.HTM

# The default target is "all". Other targets:
#       check   look for broken internal links
#       clean   erases everything and starts over
#       usr     all user tip pages (currently same as "all")

all: usr
usr: $(USRMAIN) $(USROBJ)
check:
        $(OC)\checklinks $(subst /,\,$(TOPMAIN))
clean:
        del $(subst /,\,$(TOPDIR))4*.htm /q /e /s
        @echo Done!
.PHONY: all usr check clean

$(USRDIR)%.HTM: $(SRCDIR)%.0
        ver
# The following two lines are one line in original file, broken by
# my news posting software.
        @echo $(MAKESUB) $(USRDIR) 4INDEX.HTM ./ $(notdir $@) 
$(SRCDIR)4.DEF $<
# The following two lines are one line in original file, broken by
# my news posting software.
        $(MAKESUB) $(USRDIR) 4INDEX.HTM ./ $(notdir $@) $(SRCDIR)4.DEF 
$<

# vim: tw=0 ic
==================================================================
-- 

Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
                                  http://OakRoadSystems.com/