It was documented but only in NEWS: martind@sirius:~/download/make$ sgrep wildcard | grep sort ./NEWS:179:* All wildcard expansion within GNU make, including $(wildcard ...), will sort ./NEWS:426: results from wildcard expansions, use the $(sort ...) function to request ./ChangeLog.3:1586: * NEWS: Accidentally forgot to back out the sorted wildcard martind@sirius:~/download/make$
That non-sorting of multiple arguments to wildcard, eg *.c *.h, is a nice gotcha, which wasn't in the NEWS item (presumably it didn't change). Not for me to say but the whole issue does feel worth a few lines to me. Then there's the wider topic of reproducible builds but perhaps I shouldn't pull on loose ends. ________________________________ From: Bug-make <bug-make-bounces+martin.dorey=hds....@gnu.org> on behalf of Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <ava...@gmail.com> Sent: Friday, December 3, 2021 13:10 To: psm...@gnu.org <psm...@gnu.org> Cc: bug-make@gnu.org <bug-make@gnu.org> Subject: Re: [PATCH] doc: note that $(wildcard) is implemented in terms of glob(3) ***** EXTERNAL EMAIL ***** On Fri, Dec 03 2021, Paul Smith wrote: > On Fri, 2021-12-03 at 11:08 +0100, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote: >> The motivation for this patch is that I've seen code like this in the >> wild: >> >> FILES = $(sort $(wildcard t*.sh)) >> >> I thought that it would be documented that that sort of thing was >> redundant, but I didn't find any mention of it in the manual. After >> some source spelunking I came up with this addition, which would have >> helped me when I consulted the manual. > > Originally it was not _guaranteed_ that wildcard yields sorted output. > > However, the output did happen to be sorted in older versions of GNU > make. In GNU make 3.82, that was changed to yield unsorted output. As > of GNU make 4.3, it was changed back and it is now guaranteed that > wildcard results are sorted: > > https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsavannah.gnu.org%2Fbugs%2Findex.php%3F52076&data=04%7C01%7CMartin.Dorey%40hitachivantara.com%7C18ef4b67200d42c876f808d9b6a1a956%7C18791e1761594f52a8d4de814ca8284a%7C0%7C0%7C637741627721341244%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=6av00xmXz7wmVpBSePOhJ3K3%2BNyytkQIOvXTas2qUmA%3D&reserved=0 > > I thought that I had updated the documentation to make this guarantee > clear but perhaps I forgot? As far as the proposed update goes what I should have noted that individual arguments to "wildcard" expand to sorted globs, but as noted in the thread: $(wildcard ? ?) Will return e.g. "1 2 3 1 2 3". Would a patch that's updated to note that, and discusses the behavior in older versions be acceptable for inclusion? Unless there's some place where this is documented that I didn't spot...
