For the record, I've thought of a sort-of-solution to the "would you have Make 
parse the shell command" question over the weekend. If the sub-make was called 
through a function rather than a variable, the whole issue could be a lot more 
contained. Having $(make, "<arguments passed to sub-make>") as the canonical 
form of invoking other Make instances could guarantee that no other program 
gets called when the -n switch is used. This way any elaborate multi-line 
command containing $(MAKE) could more or less be fixed with a sed command to 
completely eliminate this problem class.

Of course, one could still do something like $(make, $(shell 
("some_reckless_command")), but it would be more obvious, and Make could output 
an explicit warning about a shell being called together with the sub-make 
invocation, or even refuse to execute said shell call. Since on Fri 18/03/2022 
20:14, psm...@gnu.org<mailto:psm...@gnu.org> pointed out that this is also a 
potential security problem, a future release could deprecate the $(MAKE) 
variable and switch to the function-based invocation, with shell calls disabled 
within it by default for the sake of that extra bit of security.

From: Martin Dorey <martin.do...@hitachivantara.com>
Sent: 17 March 2022 19:27
To: Ambrus Sumegi <ambrus.sum...@arm.com>; bug-make@gnu.org
Subject: Re: GNU Make bug report: broken dry-run functionality with sub-make 
invocations

> the statement after the pipe also gets executed

Would you have Make parse the shell command, assuming that SHELL isn't eg 
/usr/bin/perl, splitting off anything after | and maybe ; and && and, why not, 
||, so it only dry-runs the part of the command that invoked $(MAKE)?  The 
current behavior is documented, 
https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/MAKE-Variable.html#MAKE-Variable
 saying:

>> whenever a recipe line of a rule contains the variable MAKE, the flags '-t', 
>> '-n' and '-q' do not apply to that line

To put it another way: the Makefile needs to cope.  Not doing the tee if the 
directory doesn't exist would perhaps be most straightforward:

martind@sirius:~/tmp/ambrus-sumegi-2022-03-17$ diff -u Makefile{.orig,}
--- Makefile.orig 2022-03-17 11:13:46.000328340 -0700
+++ Makefile 2022-03-17 11:15:04.980482898 -0700
@@ -8,4 +8,4 @@

 .PHONY: main_target
 main_target: create_logdirs
- $(MAKE) external_target | tee logs/external_task.log
+ $(MAKE) external_target | { if test -d logs; then tee logs/external_task.log; 
else cat; fi; }
martind@sirius:~/tmp/ambrus-sumegi-2022-03-17$

... though that means writing to the log with -n if the directory does exist, 
which is perhaps undesirable.  You could scrape the --dry-run flag out of 
MAKEFLAGS, where it seems to get turned into n:

martind@sirius:~/tmp/ambrus-sumegi-2022-03-17$ diff -u Makefile{.orig,}
--- Makefile.orig 2022-03-17 11:13:46.000328340 -0700
+++ Makefile 2022-03-17 11:23:29.579910454 -0700
@@ -8,4 +8,4 @@

 .PHONY: main_target
 main_target: create_logdirs
- $(MAKE) external_target | tee logs/external_task.log
+ $(MAKE) external_target $(if $(findstring n,$(filter-out 
--%,$(MAKEFLAGS))),,| tee logs/external_task.log)
martind@sirius:~/tmp/ambrus-sumegi-2022-03-17$

That coped with -nj --no-print-directory on the one version of Make that I 
tested it with, but I don't know how portable that would prove.

Thank you for a nicely written up report with a minimal test case.

________________________________
From: Bug-make 
<bug-make-bounces+martin.dorey=hds....@gnu.org<mailto:bug-make-bounces+martin.dorey=hds....@gnu.org>>
 on behalf of Ambrus Sumegi 
<ambrus.sum...@arm.com<mailto:ambrus.sum...@arm.com>>
Sent: Thursday, March 17, 2022 08:59
To: bug-make@gnu.org<mailto:bug-make@gnu.org> 
<bug-make@gnu.org<mailto:bug-make@gnu.org>>
Subject: GNU Make bug report: broken dry-run functionality with sub-make 
invocations

***** EXTERNAL EMAIL *****

Dear Devs,

I stumbled upon a rather rare case where Make produces a false error with the 
--dry-run switch. I've attached a sample Makefile for reproduction.



The output of make main_target with this file is the following:

$ make main_target

mkdir logs

make external_target | tee logs/external_task.log

make[1]: Entering directory '/tmp/21176961.tmpdir/bugrepro'

This could be in a separate file somewhere

make[1]: Leaving directory '/tmp/21176961.tmpdir/bugrepro'



Nothing interesting there. But with the -n or --dry-run switch I get:

$ make main_target -n

mkdir logs

make external_target | tee logs/external_task.log

tee: logs/external_task.log: No such file or directory

make[1]: Entering directory '/tmp/21176961.tmpdir/bugrepro'

echo "This could be in a separate file somewhere"

make[1]: Leaving directory '/tmp/21176961.tmpdir/bugrepro'

make: *** [Makefile:11: main_target] Error 1



I get that the sub-make invocation gets executed with the switch passed to it 
as well, and that is correct functionality. But then the statement after the 
pipe also gets executed and throws an error about the missing log directory due 
to the prerequisite target not having been run. This causes false failures in 
release checks that use the --dry-run option of Make.



This behavior is the same in both versions of GNU make that I have access to on 
the production system I'm using, 3.82 and 4.3

$ uname -r

3.10.0-693.21.1.el7.x86_64

$ make --version

GNU Make 3.82

Built for x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu

Copyright (C) 2010  Free Software Foundation, Inc.

License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later 
http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fgnu.org%2Flicenses%2Fgpl.html&data=04%7C01%7CMartin.Dorey%40hitachivantara.com%7C4d9a04e9960e410518da08da083966b6%7C18791e1761594f52a8d4de814ca8284a%7C0%7C0%7C637831339882701632%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=KpSFe0FVFzsYlsMTYPDwYOxRRfw26gNyhcXRaXwdesI%3D&reserved=0>

This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.

There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

# (...) Loading other version

$ make --version

GNU Make 4.3

Built for x86_64-pc-linux-gnu

Copyright (C) 1988-2020 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later 
http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html<https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fgnu.org%2Flicenses%2Fgpl.html&data=04%7C01%7CMartin.Dorey%40hitachivantara.com%7C4d9a04e9960e410518da08da083966b6%7C18791e1761594f52a8d4de814ca8284a%7C0%7C0%7C637831339882701632%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=KpSFe0FVFzsYlsMTYPDwYOxRRfw26gNyhcXRaXwdesI%3D&reserved=0>

This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.

There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are 
confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, 
please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to any 
other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the information in any 
medium. Thank you.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: The contents of this email and any attachments are 
confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, 
please notify the sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to any 
other person, use it for any purpose, or store or copy the information in any 
medium. Thank you.

Reply via email to