On Sun, Feb 6, 2022 at 8:19 AM Dmitry V. Levin <l...@altlinux.org> wrote: > > On Sun, Feb 06, 2022 at 11:23:03AM -0500, Paul Smith wrote: > > OK, someone posted a question to SO and that led me to an hour or more > > of banging my head against a wall trying to understand what's > > happening... and I can't. > > > > The problem is that the user would like to invoke $(shell ...) and > > capture errors, even errors that the program being run doesn't exist. > > The shell function only captures stdout, not stderr. This simple idea > > won't work of course: > > > > out := $(shell bad-program 2>&1) > > $(info out = $(out)) > > > > $ make > > /bin/sh: bad-program: not found > > out = > > > > because this redirects the output of the bad-program, but it's the > > shell printing the error not the program. > > What's actually happening is this: > > strace-buildroot/usr/bin/strace -f -y -eexecve,/pipe,/dup,read,write -o'|cat > >&3' --signal=none make 3>&2 &>/dev/null > 4175640 execve("/usr/bin/make", ["make"], 0x7ffdad18ea88 /* 17 vars */) = 0 > 4175640 read(4</lib64/libdl.so.2>, > "\177ELF\2\1\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0>\0\1\0\0\0@\20\0\0\0\0\0\0"..., 832) = > 832 > 4175640 read(4</lib64/libc.so.6>, > "\177ELF\2\1\1\3\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0>\0\1\0\0\0\300\343\2\0\0\0\0\0"..., 832) > = 832 > 4175640 read(4</tmp/Makefile>, "out := $(shell bad-program 2>&1)"..., 4096) = > 54 > 4175640 pipe2([5<pipe:[1062668627]>, 6<pipe:[1062668627]>], 0) = 0 > 4175642 dup2(6<pipe:[1062668627]>, 1</dev/null>) = 1<pipe:[1062668627]> > 4175642 execve("/bin/sh", ["/bin/sh", "-c", "bad-program 2>&1"], > 0x7ffd69c8a5a8 /* 17 vars */) = 0 > 4175640 read(5<pipe:[1062668627]>, <unfinished ...> > 4175642 read(4</lib64/libdl.so.2>, > "\177ELF\2\1\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0>\0\1\0\0\0@\20\0\0\0\0\0\0"..., 832) = > 832 > 4175642 read(4</lib64/libc.so.6>, > "\177ELF\2\1\1\3\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0>\0\1\0\0\0\300\343\2\0\0\0\0\0"..., 832) > = 832 > 4175642 read(4</etc/nsswitch.conf>, "#\n# Please refer to nsswitch.con"..., > 4096) = 1808 > 4175642 read(4</etc/nsswitch.conf>, "", 4096) = 0 > 4175642 read(4</etc/passwd>, "root:x:0:0:System Administrator:"..., 4096) = > 1326 > 4175643 dup2(1<pipe:[1062668627]>, 2</dev/null>) = 2<pipe:[1062668627]> > 4175643 write(2<pipe:[1062668627]>, "/bin/sh: bad-program: command no"..., > 40) = 40 > 4175640 <... read resumed>"/bin/sh: bad-program: command no"..., 200) = 40 > 4175640 read(5<pipe:[1062668627]>, <unfinished ...> > 4175643 +++ exited with 127 +++ > 4175640 <... read resumed>"", 160) = 0 > 4175642 +++ exited with 127 +++ > 4175640 write(2</dev/null>, "/bin/sh: bad-program: command no"..., 40) = 40 > 4175640 write(1</dev/null>, "out = ", 6) = 6 > 4175640 write(1</dev/null>, "\n", 1) = 1 > 4175640 read(4</tmp/Makefile>, "", 4096) = 0 > 4175640 write(2</dev/null>, "make: *** No targets. Stop.\n", 29) = 29 > 4175640 +++ exited with 2 +++ > > Try the following instead: > > out := $(shell bad-program 2>&1 ||:) > $(info out = $(out))
or out := $(shell bad-program 2>&1 || true) $(info out = $(out)) which makes it more obvious what's going on. Britton