Escaping colons in filenames in a Makefile

Question

Is there a way to get GNU make to work correctly with filenames that contain colons?

The specific problem I'm running into happens to involve a pattern rule. Here's a simplified version that does not depend on cutting and pasting tab characters:

% make --version GNU Make 3.81 Copyright (C) 2006  Free Software Foundation, Inc. This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  This program built for x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu % cat Makefile COLON := \: all: ; true %.bar: ; cp $< $@ x.bar: x.foo %.foo: ; touch $@ a$(COLON)b.bar: a$(COLON)b.foo all: x.bar a$(COLON)b.bar clean: ; rm -f *.foo *.bar % make clean rm -f *.foo *.bar % make touch x.foo cp x.foo x.bar cp  a\:b.bar cp: missing destination file operand after `a:b.bar' Try `cp --help' for more information. make: *** [a\:b.bar] Error 1 

Replacing $(COLON) with a literal : produces exactly the same result. Without the backslash, it does this:

Makefile:6: *** target pattern contains no `%'.  Stop. 

Answer 1

I doubt it's possible: see this discussion about colons in Makefiles. In summary, GNU make has never worked well with filenames that contain whitespace or colons. The maintainer, Paul D. Smith, says that adding support for escaping would tend to break existing makefiles. Furthermore, adding such support would require significant changes to the code.

You might be able to work around with some sort of nasty temporary file arrangement.

Good luck!