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(autoconf.info)Limitations of Make

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Limitations of Make
===================

   Make itself suffers a great number of limitations, only a few of
which being listed here.  First of all, remember that since commands are
executed by the shell, all its weaknesses are inherited...

`$<'
     POSIX says that the `$<' construct in makefiles can be used only
     in inference rules and in the `.DEFAULT' rule; its meaning in
     ordinary rules is unspecified.  Solaris 8's `make' for instance
     will replace it with the argument.

Leading underscore in macro names
     Some Make don't support leading underscores in macro names, such
     as on NEWS-OS 4.2R.

          $ cat Makefile
          _am_include = #
          _am_quote =
          all:; @echo this is test
          $ make
          Make: Must be a separator on rules line 2.  Stop.
          $ cat Makefile2
          am_include = #
          am_quote =
          all:; @echo this is test
          $ make -f Makefile2
          this is test

`VPATH'
     Don't use it!  For instance any assignment to `VPATH' causes Sun
     `make' to only execute the first set of double-colon rules.