Hi,

It would be really nice if make somehow used the same instance of a shell in the commands for a given rule, for example:

SHELL = /bin/bash

f :
a=5
@echo $${a}

does not do what one wants.  instead you must say:

f :
        @a=5; echo $${a}


It isn't a bug, since there is no claim that make retains a shell environment.

I don't think it would be desirable to retain the shell environment across rules, but within a rule, i think it makes sense.