Aquileo | Recent changes to 35: makefiles fail is NITROS9DIR path has spaces in it.

Aquileo | #35 makefiles fail is NITROS9DIR path has spaces in it.

Sun, 03 Jul 2022 22:09:59 -0000

https://nitros9.sourceforge.io/wiki/index.php/Building_NitrOS9
It says "prebuilt" but that means binaries.

Unix/etc allow spaces in filenames, but many tools are not so much at ease with it. If you do shell scripting, adding quotation marks all over (except where you shouldn't) works. If you do Makefiles, it is well, complicated.

Aquileo | #35 makefiles fail is NITROS9DIR path has spaces in it.

Sun, 03 Jul 2022 21:20:36 -0000

anyone with a modern Window PC would have defaulted to OneDrive

Good grief, I hope you are not right, and I think you aren't.

One could say that anyone with a Windows PC usually doesn't build his own software, and that's why we are providing release and snapshot binaries :)

And if it can be fixed simply by adding quotes around things in makefiles, why don't we just do that and solve it for everyone?

I think you tried that 2 years ago, and I think it is not so easy. GNU Make doesn't deal well with spaces, period. You will often see people install things like Cygwin, Python or many other cross-platform things on their C:\ root and that is for a reason. But here, also C:\Users\allen\Documents\nitros9 or anything like this will work too. Even Microsoft went way from using "Documents & Settings" or whatever stupid standard path element they used in the '95 days.

Anyway I think using relative paths instead of NITROS9DIR is a better way to solve this.

The days of paths without spaces is long, long gone.

That's why we like retro-computing!

At the very least, this needs to be documented.

Yes, please. If you don't have wiki access just post the text here and I'll copy it it.

Aquileo | #35 makefiles fail is NITROS9DIR path has spaces in it.

Sun, 03 Jul 2022 20:12:51 -0000

Is this documented?

As it stands today, anyone with a modern Window PC would have defaulted to OneDrive, and would be unable to build this.

Likewise, anyone with a modern Mac, with iCloud on by default, would be unable to build this.

At the very least, this needs to be documented. I consider myself a far more advanced user than most, and it's bitten me on both operating systems.

And if it can be fixed simply by adding quotes around things in makefiles, why don't we just do that and solve it for everyone?

The days of paths without spaces is long, long gone. That's been supported by OSes for so long, it's stunning this is still an issue with so many programs -- including commercial ones that cost $$$$.

Aquileo | #35 makefiles fail is NITROS9DIR path has spaces in it.

Sat, 02 Jul 2022 10:31:59 -0000

Go to a folder with no spaces in it, i.e. /Users/allen then create a soft link there:

cd
ln -s /Volumes/WhatNot/With Spaces/etc/nitros-9
cd nitros-9
make

Aquileo | #35 makefiles fail is NITROS9DIR path has spaces in it.

Sat, 02 Jul 2022 02:42:22 -0000

This hit me again tonight when I started trying to get NitrOS9 going ;-) It's the first time I've tried to build from an iCloud drive on Mac, and it has the same issue any Windows system with OneDrive has -- space in the path name, darnit.

Aquileo | #35 makefiles fail is NITROS9DIR path has spaces in it.

Sun, 26 Apr 2020 02:22:48 -0000

I don't mind doing the "trained monkey" work for massive cleanups like this. I tend to be the one that takes those on at companies I work for because no one else will do it and I know it pays off in the end ;-)

Aquileo | #35 makefiles fail is NITROS9DIR path has spaces in it.

Sun, 26 Apr 2020 02:20:04 -0000

I think it has to quote the whole thing, like if it did:

$(NITROS9DIR)/make

That whole thing needs quoted:

"$(NITROS9DIR)/make"

I will do some tests.

As to hard-coded path versus relative, going all relative would solve this as well, since as long as the make is ran from the initial directory, everything would be controlled below it and the upper install path (spaces or no) would not matter.

Aquileo | #35 makefiles fail is NITROS9DIR path has spaces in it.

Sat, 25 Apr 2020 23:03:13 -0000

This would be a quick way to just add those quotes:
sed -i 's/\$(NITROS9DIR)/"$(NITROS9DIR)"/g' $(find . -name makefile)
but frankly I am unsure if that would be enough. "make" simply doesn't deal well with spaces.

However we have a mix of using NITROS9DIR and using relative path e.g. ../../../rules.mak that it would be nice to clean up. I think relative paths are good, and they are already used in half of the places for finding rules.mak. Apart from rules.mak, NITROS9DIR is only used a few places.

Aquileo | #35 makefiles fail is NITROS9DIR path has spaces in it.

Sat, 25 Apr 2020 21:51:22 -0000

If the work is just quoting all the references, I could knock that out one evening. Assuming that works.

Aquileo | #35 makefiles fail is NITROS9DIR path has spaces in it.

Sat, 25 Apr 2020 21:49:49 -0000

Oh, that will be some work :) Take back control! But actually there are workarounds too: On Linux and MacOS and even on Windows you can use a soft link to the repo in a place without spaces in its path.