next-error was never ready for makefiles

next-error was never ready for makefiles

[Dan Jacobson]

Fellas, how could it be that 15 years ago I was already using M-x
compile and gdb etc. all hooked together, whatever, but still down to
this very day if I say, blow something in a Makefile, M-x compile
can't jump to the error:

cd /home/jidanni/unicode/
make
echo 'a@b#c|perl -wln a.pl
/bin/sh: -c: line 1: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `''
/bin/sh: -c: line 2: syntax error: unexpected end of file
make: *** [a] Error 2

Compilation exited abnormally with code 2 at Thu May 16 11:08:06

the Makefile's error is obvious:

a:
	echo 'a@b#c$"|perl -wln a.pl
#	echo 30|perl -wlne 'print hex $$_'

Anyway, will the emacs dude and/or the bash dude get together and do
what is needed for next-error to jump to problems even in makefiles?!
[first gotta say the name of the makefile...]
-- 
http://jidanni.org/ Taiwan(04)25854780

Re: next-error was never ready for makefiles

[Kevin Rodgers]

jidanni@deadspam.com (Dan Jacobson) writes:
> Fellas, how could it be that 15 years ago I was already using M-x
> compile and gdb etc. all hooked together, whatever, but still down to
> this very day if I say, blow something in a Makefile, M-x compile
> can't jump to the error:
> 
> cd /home/jidanni/unicode/
> make
> echo 'a@b#c|perl -wln a.pl
> /bin/sh: -c: line 1: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `''
> /bin/sh: -c: line 2: syntax error: unexpected end of file
> make: *** [a] Error 2
> 
> Compilation exited abnormally with code 2 at Thu May 16 11:08:06
> 
> the Makefile's error is obvious:
> 
> a:
> 	echo 'a@b#c$"|perl -wln a.pl
> #	echo 30|perl -wlne 'print hex $$_'
> 
> Anyway, will the emacs dude and/or the bash dude get together and do
> what is needed for next-error to jump to problems even in makefiles?!
> [first gotta say the name of the makefile...]

Indeed: if the user specifies the Makefile in the `M-x make' command
line via -f, Emacs would need to parse the shell command to find it.
And how is Emacs supposed to find the responsible command in the
Makefile if it's not echoed due to a leading "@"?

I don't understand how bash could be changed so that Makefile command
failures could be recognized by `M-x next-error'.  I think make itself
needs to be modified to report the line number (as well as the target
and the exit status) when a command fails.  But perhaps in the short
term we could hack up something in Emacs Lisp to match the current
error message format and generate the line number from the target.

-- 
Kevin Rodgers <kevinr@ihs.com>