Managing Projects with GNU make
by Robert Mecklenburg

The unconfirmed error reports are from readers.  They have not yet been 
approved or disproved by the author or editor and represent solely the
opinion of the reader.

Here's a key to the markup:
        [page-number]: serious technical mistake
        {page-number}: minor technical mistake
        <page-number>: important language/formatting problem
        (page-number): language change or minor formatting problem
        ?page-number?: reader question or request for clarification

This page was updated March 13, 2007.


UNCONFIRMED  errors and comments from readers: 


(12)  1st paragraph of the section "Wildcards";
"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."


(38)  Entire section, "Using Libraries as Prerequisites";
  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.