Make can't recursively call Make when run from Runtime.exec (for some user)

Question

This one is a little complicated. The afflicted platform is Mac OS X. It works fine on Linux, it seems, and even then, it does work for some Mac OS X users...
First, the setup. I have a Java program that has to call GNU Make. Then, GNU Make will recursively call Make in some subdirectories. This results in the following Java code:
String make = "make"; //on windows, I have this swapped with "mingw32-make"
String workDir = ...; //this is programmatically detected to be the same folder that the parent Makefile is in
Runtime.getRuntime().exec(make,null,workDir);This calls make on a Makefile which has the following line early on to be executed (this is only a snippet from the makefile):
cd subdirectory && $(MAKE)When I fetch the output from the make command, I usually get what I expect: It cd's to the directory and it recursively calls make and everything goes smoothly.
However, for one particular user, using Mac OS X, he has reported the following output:
cd subdirectory && make
/bin/sh: make: command not found
make: *** [PROJNAME] Error 127Which is like, kinda hurts my head... make can't find make, apparently.
I've gotten some suggestions that it might be due to the "cd" command acting wonky. I've gotten other suggestions that it may be some strange setup with the env variables (My Mac developer is implementing a fix/workaround for 'environ', which is apparently posix standard, but Mac (Mr. Posix Compliance...) doesn't implement it. When he finishes that, I'll know whether it worked or not, but I get the feeling it won't fix this problem, since it's intended for another area of code entirely...
Also worth mentioning, when the user calls "make" from the terminal in said directory, it recurses fine, getting past that particular line. (Later on down the road he hits errors with environ, which is what my aforementioned Mac dev is working on). Although calling "make" by hand is not an ideal solution here.
Anyways, I'm looking for someone who's fairly knowledgeable with Runtime.exec() to suggest some way to work around this, or at least to find out that perhaps one of the User's settings are wonked up and they can just fix it and have this working... that'd be great too.
-IsmAvatar

Answer 1

YoungWinston
YoungWinston wrote:
IsmAvatar wrote:
However, for one particular user, using Mac OS X, he has reported the following output:One particular user, or all users on Mac OS?In this case, I have two mac users. One is reporting that all works fine. The other is reporting this problem.
cd subdirectory && make
/bin/sh: make: command not found
make: *** [PROJNAME] Error 127Which is like, kinda hurts my head... make can't find make, apparently.If that is being reported on the command line, then I'd say that make wasn't being found at all.If make isn't being found, then who's interpreting the Makefile?
It's also just possible that the make script on Mac isn't correctly exporting its PATH variable, though it seems unlikely, since this would surely have been reported as a bug long ago.
I've gotten some suggestions that it might be due to the "cd" command acting wonky...Also seems unlikely. 'cd' has been around since shortly after the K-T extinction event.
WinstonBy "acting wonky", I mean being given a bad work directory or some such, such that it's not changing to the intended directory.
Andrew Thompson
Andrew Thompson wrote:
(shudder) Read and implement all the recommendations of "When Runtime.exec() won't" (http://www.javaworld.com/jw-12-2000/jw-1229-traps.html).
Already read it. I already know the dreadful wonders of Runtime.exec. But in this case, it's been working fine for us up until one Mac user reported that make can't find make.
Also, why are you still coding for Java 1.4? If you are not, use a ProcessBuilder, which takes a small part of the pain out of dealing with processes.Usually I do use a ProcessBuilder. I noticed that it usually delegates to Runtime.exec() anyways, and seeing as I didn't need any of the additional functionality, I decided to just use Runtime.exec() in this particular case.
jschell
jschell wrote:
So print thos env vars, in your app and when the user does it.I'll look into that. It's a good start.
-IsmAvatar