Older versions of make do not support "abspath"

[jphickey]

Describe the bug
The table build procedure uses the GNU make function $(abspath <file>) as documented here: https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/File-Name-Functions.html#index-abspath-1

However, older versions of make (e.g. 3.8) appear to not support this function as described - although make itself does not throw an error about this function, the result is an empty string. This in turn causes the command being executed to fail because its missing the argument, which is supposed to be a file name.

To Reproduce
Build the software using an older version of GNU make, an error such as this occurs:

cd elf/lx_es1_stub/ && /usr/bin/ar x  cfe_test_tbl.c.o
/usr/bin/ar: cfe_test_tbl.c.o: No such file or directory

Expected behavior
There should be a library filename between the "x" and the object filename.

Code snips
The command in the makefile here is:

cFE/cmake/tables/elf2cfetbl_rules.mk

Line 5 in 8852743

cd $(dir $(@)) && $(AR) x $(abspath $(<)) $(notdir $(@))

Note that the $(abspath $(<)) evaluated to the empty string. Whereas on GNU make 4.x this works as described in the documentation.

System observed on:
VxWorks 6.9, which ships a binary version of GNU make v3.8.

Reporter Info
Joseph Hickey, Vantage Systems, Inc.