[fpc-devel] Name of Make executable may cause errors during makes

[Mehmet Erol Sanliturk]

Dear All ,

During reading messages from FPC related lists about make errors and 
from my experiences I think that using name MAKE is causing problems :

(1)
Software developers are likely that they are installing many compilers .
Some compilers ( or software packages ) are supplying build executables 
such as make . link ( ld ) . etc .
These are also recorded in PATH definitions . In a case when I suspected 
that an improper make is selected , I have counted approximately 80 make 
executables in my directories with many of them in PATH statement.

Some errors during make usage reported by e-mails getting suggestion 
about re-install FPC possibly by a new release although the error(s) may 
not be directly related to FPC itself .

Re-installation is changing PATH definitions and allowing use of make 
and others from the FPC related directories . I think this point is not 
mentioned explicitly .

(2)
My approach is that using an FP-Make.BAT having an explicit FPC make path ,
for example ,
\fpc\2.2.4\ ... \make

Actually this is not also very effective  because  statements using only 
names of these programs without complete path within Makefiles are 
selecting programs from current PATH .

Another problem is FPC supplied make , ld , etc. are NOT displaying 
information about themselves like FPC compiler itself . Therefore it is 
not possible to understand which program is used when an error occurs ( 
Up to now I did not see any other make which is able to apply FPC 
supplied Makefiles . )



Suggestions :

(1)
Supply these programs as recompiled to display information about 
themselves .

(ii)
Change their names as specific  to FPC  such as fpc-ld.exe , 
fpc-make.exe , etc.  ,   OR
in  ALL of the  Makefile  statements  using these programs , use 
explicit paths
of their names to avoid mix-up with other same programs .

(iii)
In installation notes , ALWAYS specify the above point and how to use a 
proper make
executable .


Thank you very much .

Mehmet Erol Sanliturk