Re: How to choose the shell?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: John Freeman <jfreeman08@gmail.com>
> Date: Sat, 4 Sep 2021 11:33:01 -0500
> Cc: make-w32@gnu.org
> 
> I have since discovered [this 
> thread](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/make-w32/2020-05/msg00001.html),
> the very previous thread on this mailing list, working through the exact same 
> problem. I'm happy that there is
> a workaround, but this seems to me like undocumented behavior. It is not 
> mentioned anywhere in the
> [pages](https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/Execution.html#Execution)
>  on Recipe
> Execution. One might argue that the parenthetical statement "(In practice, 
> make may take shortcuts that do
> not affect the results.)" implies this behavior, but I think we can see that 
> this behavior _does_ affect the
> results. At the very least, I think this behavior should be explicitly 
> documented. Perhaps a footnote?

It's not documented because the details are complex and hard to
explain, and the result isn't supposed to depend on whether Make
invokes commands directly or via the shell.  So why do you care to
know which way does make invoke a given command?

> My preference would be to have some other workaround that doesn't require me 
> to modify every recipe line,
> e.g. a special variable `.FORCE_SHELL`.

What for?  Make is for building programs by running shell commands.
As long as the results of running a command are the same, why should
you care how that command is invoked, and why would you need a way to
force invocation via the shell?