Cannot build Rust documentation on Windows with spaces in paths to Pandoc and/or LaTeX.

[vharavy]

When I run ./configure and then make from MinGW-W64 shell everything goes fine until the process stumbles:

rustdoc: doc/not_found.html
rustdoc: doc/index.html
pandoc: doc/index.epub
/c/Program Files (x86)/Pandoc/pandoc --standalone --toc --number-sections --to=epub /d/Sources/Rust/src/doc/index.md --output=doc/index.epub
/bin/sh: -c: line 0: syntax error near unexpected token `('
/bin/sh: -c: line 0: `/c/Program Files (x86)/Pandoc/pandoc --standalone --toc --number-sections --to=epub /d/Sources/Rust/src/doc/index.md --output=doc/index.epub'
/d/Sources/Rust/mk/docs.mk:216: recipe for target 'doc/index.epub' failed
make: *** [doc/index.epub] Error 1

I guess the problem is that I have Pandoc installed in C:\Program Files (x86)\Pandoc and MiKTeX in C:\Program Files\MiKTeX\ and both of these paths contains spaces.

I have tried to fix the problem myself by editing configure script. In particular I have tried replacing

printf "%-20s := %s\n" $1 "$T" >>config.tmp

in putvar function with

printf "%-20s := %q\n" $1 "$T" >>config.tmp

As the result, config.tmp contained properly escaped paths, but the following code at the end of configure script

# Munge any paths that appear in config.mk back to posix-y
perl -i.bak -p -e 's@ ([a-zA-Z]):[/\\]@ /\1/@go;' \
               -e 's@\\@/@go;' config.tmp 

Replaced all backslashes to forward slashes thus ruining the paths again.

At this point I am stuck. My next try will be disabling this transformation but I am not sure whether it is safe or not. It works for me, but I would very much like to resolve this problem once and for all. I am willing to work on this and submit merge request afterwards but at this point any guidance will be appreciated.

[brson]

Sadly, I think you are the first to investigate making the build system compatible with spaces-in-filenames. Good luck!

[vharavy]

@brson There is not a lot to investigate. I have a working solution as I described in my original post, but it involves removing code that replaces backslashes with forward slashes. I don't see a reason why not, but I cannot be sure whether it was added as safety-measure or it is really required on some configurations. All I would like to know is whether it is okay. If so, I will submit pull request and move on to more interesting stuff.

[vharavy]

Submitted pull request #18673.

[brson]

Fix for this is being reverted presently: #18848

[vharavy]

There is no need to revert the entire fix for this. The problem with distcheck can be easily fixed by removing extra double around $(CFG_ISCC) quotes on 128 in dist.mk. My pull request essentially put double quotes around all path variables. So, whenever some variables is put in double quotes in makefile, we the problem as reported.

@brson May (or should) I attempt to fix problem with distcheck that does not require reverting my commits?

[vharavy]

Submitted as #18851.