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