further comments from mailtainers of debian lua packages:
The simplest workaround is to call it (pkg-config) this way:
pkg-config --cflags lua5.1 | sed -e "s/\\/'/" -e "s/\\"/"'/"
But the best would be to make the authors of these makefiles aware that something like -DFOO="bar" is a valid flag for gcc and their makefiles should be able to deal with it. I've already pointed out the place that needs fixing.
which was this:
quote:= " escall= $(subst $$,$$,$(subst $(quote),$(quote),$1)) exec_cmd= $(if $($(quiet)_cmd_$(1)),\ @echo "$(call escall,$($(quiet)_cmd_$(1)))" ;) $(cmd_$(1))
-- juha