The following reply was made to PR pkg/36588; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Christoph Badura <bad@bsd.de>
To: gnats-bugs@NetBSD.org
Cc: rillig@NetBSD.org, gnats-admin@netbsd.org, pkgsrc-bugs@netbsd.org
Subject: Re: pkg/36588: pkg-build-options.mk fails if no options were selected
Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2007 20:46:50 +0200

 On Wed, Aug 01, 2007 at 01:25:02AM +0000, Roland Illig wrote:
 >  1. The package does not use the options framework at all. In this case, 
 >  I would not be surprised about the warnings.
 
 It is obvious that the package give in the example uses the options framework.
 
 >  2. The package uses the options framework, is already installed and has 
 >  no options selected. In this case, pkg_info prints an empty line, which 
 >  is not treated as "empty output" by make (at least for NetBSD 3.0 and 
 >  current pkgsrc).
 
 The package in the example (libgnomeui) is indeed installed on the system
 as an automatic dependency with no options selected.
 
 pkg_info does *not* print an empty line in that case.  It prints nothing:
 
 nervous-energy!bad 162 % pkg_info -Q PKG_OPTIONS libgnomeui | od -x
 nervous-energy!bad 163 % 
 
 >  3. The package uses the options framework and is not yet installed. In 
 >  this case, the show-var target is used which also prints an empty line.
 
 ISTR that I tested it under these conditions too and I saw the same error.
 However, I can't reproduce it now.
 
 Here is how to reproduce the behaviour with a makefile:
 
 nervous-energy!bad 167 % cat zorch
 FOO != true 2> /dev/null
 
 all:
 nervous-energy!bad 168 % make -f zorch
 make: "/tmp/zorch" line 1: warning: Couldn't read shell's output for "true 2> /dev/null"
 nervous-energy!bad 169 % 
 
 --chris