bin/41908: make: $? not always set

[Chaskiel M Grundman]

The following reply was made to PR bin/41908; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Chaskiel M Grundman <cg2v at andrew.cmu.edu>
To: Volker Stolz <stolz at i2.informatik.rwth-aachen.de>,
	freebsd-gnats-submit at FreeBSD.org
Cc:  
Subject: Re: bin/41908: make: $? not always set
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 12:41:28 -0500

 --On Wednesday, February 18, 2004 10:14:19 +0100 Volker Stolz
 <stolz at i2.informatik.rwth-aachen.de> wrote:
 
 > .OODATE   The list of sources for this target that were deemed
 >                        out-of-date; also known as `?'.
 
 Given that definition for $?, I suppose that make's behavior is correct.
 You may close the bug if you wish.
 
 It's unfortunate that the meaning of $? differs from that used by Sun make
 and GNU Make.
 
 Sun's make.1 says:
      $?    The list of dependencies that are newer than the  tar-
            get.  
 
 make.info says:
 `$?'
      The names of all the prerequisites that are newer than the target,
      with spaces between them.  For prerequisites which are archive
      members, only the member named is used
 
 
 $> isn't a good workaround for me, as it's BSD specific. The software
 probably would have been using $^ (which seems similar to how you describe
 $>), except that $^ is GNU specific.