I'm reporting this as a bug against smake without
any claim that it represents a deviation from
documented behavior.  There is a work-around for
it, although it does complicate our "check-out
and automated build" process somewhat.

Consider this excerpt from a Makefile:

# Generate the auto-scanned dependency graph.
depends :
        @$(PERL) $(PROJTOOLS)\makedeps.pl *.CXX *.H *.A86 > depends.mak

!if exist(depends.mak)
! include depends.mak
!else
! if [echo. > depends.mak]
! endif
! if [$(MAKE) depends] || 1
!  message  Please delete "depends.mak" whenever dependencies change.
! endif
! if exist(depends.mak)
!  include depends.mak
! else
!  error Cannot generate depends.mak, build failed.
! endif
!endif

The result of having the recursive call "! if [$(MAKE) depends] || 1" when smake is the Makefile interpretor is an infinite recursion.  I think the reason smake acts that way and nmake does not is that the bracketed conditionals are evaluated after building the make syntax tree in smake, leading to a no-leaf branch, while nmake executes and switches on the conditional as it is encountered.

I know that recursive make is frowned upon these days, but I will say that the above construct has been very handy and, until I began using smake, trouble free.

I appreciate that this may be a low-priority bug or as-designed and will not be a disgruntled customer should smake continue to never stop executing the above construct.

-- 
-Larry Brasfield
(address munged, s/sn/h/ to reply)

"Larry Brasfield" <larry_brasfield@snotmail.com> wrote in message news:MPG.17b3697d9e8e969989689@news.digitalmars.com...
> I appreciate that this may be a low-priority bug or as-designed and will not be a disgruntled customer should smake continue to never stop executing the above construct.

Smake isn't being worked on at the moment, but I do save all the bug reports and log them against each component. When there's enough to open development on a component again, all the bug reports are there and can be addressed. So the bug reports you take the time to prepare are worthwhile.

Thanks, -Walter