Make 4.2.1

[chris@…]

New version

A complete list of bugs fixed in this version is available here:

http://sv.gnu.org/bugs/index.php?group=make&report_id=111&fix_release_id=106&set=custom

* New variable: $(.SHELLSTATUS) is set to the exit status of the last != or
  $(shell ...) function invoked in this instance of make.  This will be "0" if
  successful or not "0" if not successful.  The variable value is unset if no
  != or $(shell ...) function has been invoked.

* The $(file ...) function can now read from a file with $(file <FILE).
  The function is expanded to the contents of the file.  The contents are
  expanded verbatim except that the final newline, if any, is stripped.

* The makefile line numbers shown by GNU make now point directly to the
  specific line in the recipe where the failure or warning occurred.
  Sample changes suggested by Brian Vandenberg <phantall@gmail.com>

* The interface to GNU make's "jobserver" is stable as documented in the
  manual, for tools which may want to access it.

  WARNING: Backward-incompatibility! The internal-only command line option
  --jobserver-fds has been renamed for publishing, to --jobserver-auth.

* The amount of parallelism can be determined by querying MAKEFLAGS, even when
  the job server is enabled (previously MAKEFLAGS would always contain only
  "-j", with no number, when job server was enabled).

* VMS-specific changes:

  * Perl test harness now works.

  * Full support for converting Unix exit status codes to VMS exit status
    codes.  BACKWARD INCOMPATIBILITY Notice: On a child failure the VMS exit
    code is now the encoded Unix exit status that Make usually generates, not
    the VMS exit status of the child.

This version causes problems with parallel builds in some packages - ones that built fine with multiple make jobs now only work with -j1. I've uploaded a patch taken from LFS, which came from upstream, to fix this issue.

[chris@…]

Make 4.2.1 is now released, and does not need the patch for parallel builds.

[William Harrington]

I've been using this with a recent CLFS ARM build without issues.

[William Harrington]

Fixed at commit bf820eefcbf9c66ed07588ee8cfa71def40a2349