I build gnumake and run it on windows. When executing a command ($(shell ..), the command executes, but afterwards make crashes because the MS debug C-Runtime detects a close(-1) and throws an error.

When debugging, I saw that the offending close was at
function.c:1687
      /* Close the write side of the pipe.  */
      (void) close (pipedes[1]);

pipedes[1] is -1, pipedes[0] is a valid file handle.

A workaround at this point would be a if(pipedes[1]!=-1) close(..)

...

When debugging further, I looked at the function "windows32_openpipe". What happens is that the child process spawns fine, but the line 1490:
pipedes[1] = _open_osfhandle((long) hChildOutWr, O_APPEND);
sets pipedes[1] to -1.

I actually don't get this coding, but maybe its me. What I don't understand is how the stdin to the child process is supposed to work at all. Parent hands down its own duplicated stdin to the child
(see line 1471, "hProcess = process_init_fd(hIn, hChildOutWr,
hErr);"
and later on tries to get an OS handle for the write end of the child's stdout pipe (line 1490)?
As I said, maybe I simply don't get it. Microsoft's example for stdio-redirection looks different:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/190351
"How to spawn console processes with redirected standard handles"

Best Regards,

Thomas Stuefe