With this GNU Make construct one shell invocation can be skipped and code looks shorter (narrower). This would now match to .git being other file type than regular file or directory (or symlink to those), but that is not a use case anyone should expect users to do. --- Makefile.local | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/Makefile.local b/Makefile.local index ee3cf18f5757..045549b54442 100644 --- a/Makefile.local +++ b/Makefile.local @@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ # repository), we let git append identification of the actual commit. PACKAGE=notmuch -IS_GIT:=$(shell if [ -d ${srcdir}/.git -o -f ${srcdir}/.git ] ; then echo yes ; else echo no; fi) +IS_GIT:=$(if $(wildcard ${srcdir}/.git),yes,no) ifeq ($(IS_GIT),yes) DATE:=$(shell git --git-dir=${srcdir}/.git log --date=short -1 --pretty=format:%cd) -- 2.8.2