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