Re: Emacs makefile mode - Commented text turns tab pink

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On Saturday, April 25th, 2026 at 4:32 AM, Heime <[email protected]> wrote:

> 
> On Saturday, April 25th, 2026 at 3:15 AM, Eli Zaretskii <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> > > Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2026 15:06:07 +0000
> > > From: Heime <[email protected]>
> > >
> > >
> > > I made a makefile with some comments. In Emacs the tab of the
> > > comment turns pink.  An I doing something wrong?
> > >
> > > $(trgdir)/antares.info: $(srcdir)/antares.texi
> > > 	## Make any missing parent directories
> > > 	mkdir -p $(trgdir)
> > > 	$(MAKEINFO) $(MAKEINFOFLAGS) -o $@ $<
> >
> > make-mode.el says:
> >
> > 	    ;; Highlight shell comments that Make treats as commands,
> > 	    ;; since these can fool people.
> > 	    ("^\t+#" 0 makefile-space t)
> >
> 
> Make treats the comment "## Make any missing parent directories"
> as a command?

I realized Emacs is correct: make doesn't treat lines starting with # 
as comments - it passes them verbatim to the shell as commands, where 
the shell ignores them as comments.

Is it design simplicity that has MAKE delegate to the shell? 

The introduction of a comment seems to be implemented in a very
restricted way if comments were not handled by the shell.