How do I handle files with spaces in my Makefile?

Question

So some anonymous developers have decided to use a ridiculous convention of using spaces in their folder names that contain their source files. I would change these folders not to use spaces but sadly I don't make the rules around here so that's not an option (though I wish it were).

LUAC            = luac

SRC_DIR         = .
SOURCE          =                                                      \
stupid/naming\ convention/a.lua                                        \
stupid/naming\ convention/very\ annoying/b.lua                         \

vpath .lua $(SRC_DIR)

OUT_DIR         = ../out/
OUTPUT          = $(patsubst %.lua, $(OUT_DIR)/%.luac, $(SOURCE))


all: $(OUTPUT)

$(OUT_DIR)/%.luac: %.lua
    $(LUAC) "$<"
    mv luac.out "$@"

.PHONY: all

Simple Makefile. All it's meant to do is compile all the Lua files that I have and put them into an output directory.

No matter I do it keeps wanting to split the SOURCE string on the spaces in the folder, so I end with a beautiful error like this:

make: *** No rule to make target `stupid/naming ', needed by `all'.  Stop.

Is there a way to fix this without renaming the folders?

Thanks in advance.

Haw you tried `\\ ` instead of `\ `? e.g. `stupid/naming\\ convention/a.lua` — lifus, Jul 31 '13 at 09:01
This gives me: `make: *** No rule to make target 'stupid/naming\', needed by 'all'. Stop.` — OLL, Jul 31 '13 at 09:14
This looks like a duplicate question to me. See this question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9838384/can-gnu-make-handle-filenames-with-spaces — Chris, Jul 31 '13 at 21:56
Possible duplicate of [Can GNU make handle filenames with spaces?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9838384/can-gnu-make-handle-filenames-with-spaces) — Dima Chubarov, Jul 10 '18 at 04:25

score 8 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 31 '13 at 11:50

The very short, but IMO ultimately correct, answer is that make (not just GNU make, but all POSIX-style make implementations) does not support pathnames containing whitespace. If you want to use make, your "anonymous developers" simply cannot use them. If they insist that this is an absolute requirement you should switch to a different build tool altogether, that does support whitespace in filenames.

Yes, it's barely possible to create a makefile that will work with filenames containing whitespace, but you will essentially have to rewrite all your makefiles from scratch, and you will not be able to use many of the features of GNU make so your makefiles will be long, difficult to read, and difficult to maintain.

Just tell them to get over themselves. Or if they really can't, try having them create their workspace in a pathname without any whitespace in the names, then create a symbolic link containing whitespace pointing to the real workspace (the other way around won't work in all situations).

As much as I would rather avoid using spaces altogether it simply isn't an option :( .. You speak of "a different build tool".. do you know of any alternative build tools that can handle spaces with ease? I'll gladly learn another build tool if that's what it takes. — OLL, Aug 06 '13 at 08:58
There are many different build tools out there, but I'm not familiar with them so I can't tell you which ones are popular/still supported, which ones are portable, and which ones handle whitespace in filenames. Also there are feature considerations (parallel builds, recursion/non-recursive, efficiency, etc.) You can Google terms like "gnu make alternatives" etc. Some that I'm aware of include scons, cook, bras, ant. Literally all I know about them is their name. — MadScientist, Aug 06 '13 at 12:07

lifus · Answer 2 · 2013-07-31T12:52:45.593

Unfortunately, GNU Make's functions that deal with space-separated list do not respect the escaping of the space. The only exception is wildcard.

Edit:

Here's my workaround:

LUAC            = luac

SRC_DIR         = .
SOURCE          =                                                      \
stupid/naming\ convention/a.lua                                        \
stupid/naming\ convention/very\ annoying/b.lua                         \

vpath .lua $(SRC_DIR)


OUT_DIR         = ../out/
OUTPUT          = $(patsubst %.lua,%.luac,$(SOURCE))


all: $(OUTPUT)

%.luac: %.lua
    $(LUAC) "$<"
    mv luac.out "$@""

.PHONY: all

I tried to output it first like that:

%.luac: %.lua
    @echo "$<"
    @echo "$@""

Output looks as follows:

stupid/naming convention/a.lua
../out/stupid/naming convention/a.luac
stupid/naming convention/very annoying/b.lua
../out/stupid/naming convention/very annoying/b.luac

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 31 '13 at 22:32

If you look at this excellent write up: http://www.cmcrossroads.com/article/gnu-make-meets-file-names-spaces-them, the author suggests that this is mostly a difficult task. But his substitution functions could get you going in case you really can't avoid the spaces.

Putting this into your makefile would look like this (sorry if I changed some of your paths, but this works on my Cygwin installation):

LUAC            = luac

s+ = $(subst \\ ,+,$1)
+s = $(subst +,\ ,$1) 

SRC_DIR  = .
SOURCE  := stupid/naming\\ convention/a.lua 
SOURCE := $(call s+,$(SOURCE)) 

vpath .lua $(SRC_DIR)

OUT_DIR         = out/
OUTPUT          = $(patsubst %.lua, $(OUT_DIR)/%.luac, $(SOURCE))

all: $(call +s,$(OUTPUT))

$(OUT_DIR)/%.luac: %.lua
    $(LUAC) "$<"
    mv luac.out "$@"

.PHONY: all

I know that's not a complete answer, but maybe an encouragement that it actually is possible. But I agree with the other posters that if you can actually avoid spaces altogether, you will have a much easier life!

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 08 '20 at 02:37

Another strategy which works when you are generating your Makefile automatically is this one, also used in Perl's ExtUtils::MakeMaker: to separate the name formatted to be usable in recipes, versus it being usable as a dependency. The example here has a THISFILE and a THISFILEDEP.

AWKWARD_DIR = sub dir
AWKWARD_DIRDEP = sub\ dir
THISFILE = $(AWKWARD_DIR)/d1
THISFILEDEP = $(AWKWARD_DIRDEP)/d1
AWKWARD_DIR_EXISTS = $(AWKWARD_DIR)/.exists
AWKWARD_DIR_EXISTSDEP = $(AWKWARD_DIRDEP)/.exists
TARGET = $(AWKWARD_DIR)/t1
TARGETDEP = $(AWKWARD_DIRDEP)/t1
MAKEFILE = spacemake.mk

$(TARGETDEP): $(THISFILEDEP) $(AWKWARD_DIR_EXISTSDEP)
        cat "$(THISFILE)" >"$(TARGET)"

$(THISFILEDEP): $(AWKWARD_DIR_EXISTSDEP)
        echo "yo" >"$(THISFILE)"

$(AWKWARD_DIR_EXISTSDEP): $(MAKEFILE)
        @echo MAKEFILE = $(MAKEFILE)
        -mkdir "$(AWKWARD_DIR)"
        touch "$(AWKWARD_DIR_EXISTS)"

You can try it by placing it in a file called e.g. spacemake.mk, then run it with gmake -f spacemake.mk.

How do I handle files with spaces in my Makefile?

4 Answers4