Errata

Because the printf is in a phony target, the message is printed immediately before any prerequisites are updated

Should read...

Because build_msg is in a phony target, the message is printed immediately before any prerequisites are updated

The sentence starting:
"So the principle"
should be
"So the principal"

(Mixing up principal and principle.)

There is a hyphen being interpreted like an in-word break. Text ([c] ... [/c] denotes fixed-width code snippet):

When a prerequisite of the form [c]-l<NAME>[/c] is seen, ...

It has been typeset thus:

When a prerequisite of the form-

"GNUMakefile" should read "GNUmakefile".

"Wildcards are automatically expanded by make whenever a wildcard appears in a
target, prerequisite or command script context."

Because neither "target", "prerequisite" nor "command script" is an adjective, none
of them should be used to modify "context". In fact, it is not clear that "target"
and "prerequisite" are intended to modify "context". There is a disconcerting change
in number of the subject of the sentence following "whenever".

In the last paragraph of the section on "Wildcards", the author makes the distinction
between the expansion done by make and the expansion done by the command shell. It
seems to be an oversimplification to write, "Wildcards are automatically expanded by
make ... in a ... command script context." I would be better to leave out "by make"
here, since "by what" is explained later.

The sentence should be written, "A wildcard is automatically expanded whenever it
appears in the context of a target, prerequisite or command script."

$(AWK), $(SORT) and $(PR) variables are not defined on my system. Even when I run make -p, I still don't get the names of these variables in the data base. What should the be defined to?

Thank you

That section doesn't appear to explain how to *customize* the library search path
if you use the "-l" form of prerequisite. According to the online make manual:

"When a prerequisite's name has the form `-lname', make handles it specially by
searching for the file `libname.so' in the current directory, in directories
specified by matching vpath search paths and the VPATH search path, and then in the
directories `/lib', `/usr/lib', and `prefix/lib' (normally `/usr/local/lib', but MS-
DOS/MS-Windows versions of make behave as if prefix is defined to be the root of the
DJGPP installation tree).

If that file is not found, then the file `libname.a' is searched for, in the same
directories as above."

There is no mention of vpath or VPATH in that section, and that seems to be a
pretty major omission.

The typo: the command line option should read "--print-data-base" instead of "--print-database".


Also, it's not clear why "ls.o" depends on "ls.c" as the command output printed on the book. The output of this command is different from what I tried:

[bruin@f12 tmp]$ gmake -v
GNU Make 3.81
Copyright (C) 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.
There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

This program built for i386-redhat-linux-gnu
[bruin@f12 tmp]$ cat Makefile
define mac
$1_src = $(filter %.c,$2)
$1_hdr = $(filter %.h,$2)
$1_obj = $(subst .c,.o,$(filter %.c,$2))

$($1_obj): $($1_hdr)
endef

ls: $(ls_obj)

$(eval $(call mac,ls,ls.c ls.h glob.c glob.h))



[bruin@f12 tmp]$ gmake -p|grep ^ls
ls_src = ls.c glob.c
ls_obj = ls.o glob.o
ls_hdr = ls.h glob.h
ls:
[bruin@f12 tmp]$

The sentence:
"Of course, the order of these filename components is up your site."
has a missing "to". It should be:
"Of course, the order of these filename components is up to your site."

change:

-e 's/ *\$$$$//'

to

-e 's/ *\\$$//'

Other errata in this make-depend macro are already listed

`for` keyword should be `foreach`, which is a valid GNU Make function.