set -e -o pipefail not working because of make incompatibility

Question

I am attempting to run a bash script/makefile with the line

set -e -o pipefail

The makefile itself has the terse line that this doesn't appear to work with make 3.81, which is the version my Ubuntu install gives me.

(Running the script gives me: set: Illegal option -o pipefail)

Is there a way round this?

Answer 1

By default make uses /bin/sh to run shell code so you can't run bash-specific commands.

Add the line

SHELL=/bin/bash

to make make use bash instead. See the GNU make documentation for more about this.