When make concats a variable defined in one makefile with a
variable defined in another makefile and the 2nd variable
starts with a / it parses incorrectly.
Example:
In file "Rules" this variable is defined
A=outputdirectory
in makefile in directory "subdirs" this is defined
B=/test
the makefile in the subdir directory has the line
include ../Rules

in Rules there is this target

all::
	@echo $(A)$(B)

the expected output is
outputdirectory/test
the actual output is
/testtdirectory

I have tar files which setup and demonstrate the minimal set
of files required to reproduce this bug.  I can be reached
at gregb if you would like these files.
This bug has been tested with kernel 2.2.9 and 2.2.11
The 2.2.9 installation was from the Mandrake distribution of
Red Hat Linux 6.0.  The 2.2.11 kernel was simply a download
form www.kernel.org and a recompile.
This bug is making it impossible for our make files to work
in a cross platform enviornment that includes Linux.  We
have them working on NT running the Cygnus bash shell and on
Solaris.

Give me an e-mail if I can be of any help at all.  Certainly
, I can at least give you the tar files that demonstrate
this bug.  Just let me know and I'll help out in any way
except programming :-)  I have too much of that to do here
at work.

Have a great day.

Greg