On Sat, Jun 17, 2017 at 10:40:25PM -0400, Christos Zoulas wrote: > On Jun 18, 12:36am, jo...@bec.de (Joerg Sonnenberger) wrote: > -- Subject: Re: CVS commit: src/usr.bin/make > > | Please do not unilaterally change behavior. Especially if it has been > | discussed in the past. This is rude at best and not everyone shares your > | opinion. > > Please explain the use case (aside for looking at the internal representation > of a variable). For example, if .OBJDIR, LIB, etc. ended up unexpanded, many > things would break. I just don't think it is useful to be the default, and > using -V '${var}' to get it to expand is counter-intuitive. Why should it > behave differently in the first place?
They haven't been expanded for years, if ever. You have broken any user of the unexpanded variables already. ${var} is a pretty intuitive semantics for "show me this expression". It even works for complex expressions involving modifiers. Your change has increased the complexity of the argument format without providing any new value. It has broken compatibility. It was not discussed. I think those are more than enough reasons to ask for a revert. Joerg