odd Makefile construct - anyone know why?

[Zack Weinberg]

On Wed, Nov 01, 2000 at 09:58:26AM -0700, Jeffrey A Law wrote:
>   In message <20001021153119.J16750@wolery.stanford.edu>you write:
>   > In a large number of places we have Makefile constructs such as
>   > 
>   > 	$(CC) -c $(ALL_CFLAGS) $(ALL_CPPFLAGS) $(INCLUDES) $(BIG_SWITCHFLAG) \
>   >   `echo $(PARSE_C) | sed 's,^\./,,'`
>   > 
>   > Does anyone know the reason for the `echo | sed` bit?  I know it
>   > deletes a './' from the beginning of whatever $(PARSE_C) is, but I
>   > cannot figure out why that would be necessary.  This is done whenever
>   > we override the suffix rule for compiling a file.
> Possibly for the debugger?  I've always wondered about this braindamage
> myself.

We don't do it consistently, either.  If you don't know what it's for,
probably no one does...

Would you be okay with a patch that strips them all?  We can always
put it back if something breaks, it's a mechanical change.

zw