make alters subprocess environment

Hi all! 

Here is what I'm interested in -- make *seems to alter subprocess environment somehow (current dir and variables supposedly). Here is the story.

For testing of a Delphi5 application under WindowsXP I've established following call chain (on my machine make is renamed to gmake): 

gmake.exe -> testApp.exe -> ..\..\db_comparator\db_comparator.py <some params>

The latter is a separate utility intended to test the equality of some database tables during tests, a thing written in python just for the case. 

I've discovered, that CreateProcess() (used in testApp.exe for calls to python utility) cannot parse relative paths to executables. Then I've modified chain: 

gmake.exe -> testApp.exe -> db_comparator.bat -> ..\..\db_comparator\db_comparator.py <some params>

where db_comparator.bat is in the same dir with testApp.exe and obviously contains:

..\..\db_comparator.py %*

this configuration seemed to work, but ONLY if i run testApp.exe manually. When gmake runs it during all the tests -- it fails. Manual rerun (from cmd) of db_comparator.bat or ..\..\db_comparator.py with the same parameters is successful.

Summarizing:  

gmake.exe -> testApp.exe -> db_comparator.bat -> ..\..\db_comparator\db_comparator.py <some params> 
  FAILS

testApp.exe -> db_comparator.bat -> ..\..\db_comparator\db_comparator.py <some params> 
  WORKS

Another issue connected. If I want interrupt a make run by pressing Ctrl-C at the cmd terminal, windows reports: "gmake.exe -- error encountered. The application will be closed", and when i close this window, at the termnial make says: 

  gmake: *** [test] Error -1073741510

Moreover, this sequence (an error window and a line at terminal) happens once for every nested gmake, that was active at the moment of interruption, so it may result in this: 

gmake[3]: *** [testApp.exe] Error -1073741510
gmake[2]: *** [build] Error -1073741819
gmake[1]: *** [test] Error -1073741819
gmake: *** [test] Error -1073741819
 
These two issues seem to be connected with the way make controls its subprocesses. What is known?.. 

APPENDIX: 

  C:\>gmake --version
  GNU Make version 3.75, by Richard Stallman and Roland McGrath.

Thank you for reading all this length, 

--pavel. 



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