Re: Dependent Shell Commands

[Soren A]

Steve <address@hidden> wrote around 27 Sep 2002
news:address@hidden: 

> If this is a silly question then please forgive me, but I'm new to GNU
> Make. 

It isn't really a silly question, but it does show your lack of familiarity 
with 'make'.

> [...] can't assume that the strfile command [...] is going to be in
> the users $PATH. For example, SuSE puts strfile in /usr/sbin, which
> isn't automatically in $PATH.

Basically this sort of thing, generally, is why 'configure' build setups 
exist.

{snip}
> Testing the command within a for loop sucks, but I can't seem to
> define the command on the fly and then us it within the loop without
> getting an error. So, my question is really this: how do I test for a
> shell command and define it on the fly?

Hmmmph. If you _have to_ do it in make, then i would suggest trying 
something like this (untested in the specific sense but I have used similar 
approaches in my own Makefiles in the past, rarely...):

  POSS_PATHS = /usr/bin /usr/sbin /usr/local/bin
  my_CMD = $(firstword $(wildcard \
    $(addsuffix /strfile$(EXEEXT),$(POSS_PATHS))))

  ifeq "$(strip $(my_CMD))" ""
  $(error No strfile found, edit POSS_PATHS to help me out!)
  endif

HTH,
  Soren A