Hi Paul, On Tue, Jul 16, 2024 at 02:39:11PM GMT, Paul Smith wrote: > On Tue, 2024-07-16 at 20:27 +0200, Alejandro Colomar wrote: > > As discussed in a different thread, the docs claim that GNUMAKEFLAGS > > and > > MAKEFLAGS are treated in the same way. > > > > All else equal, since I'm using GNU-specific flags, I think I should > > be > > using GNUMAKEFLAGS. > > > > However, Paul said that I should use MAKEFLAGS, because GNUMAKEFLAGS > > is not special when passing -R and/or -r. > > That's not actually what I said. > > What I said was that GNUMAKEFLAGS is not special when it appears inside > a makefile. It's only special when it's read from the environment.
Sorry for my imprecise wording. I meant that. > > That is, this does what you expect: > > $ GNUMAKEFLAGS=-Rr make -f Makefile But this would be quite insane, isn't it? (Except during recursive make(1), which is also insane in its own way.) :-) > > but this doesn't do what you expect: > > $ cat Makefile.pre > GNUMAKEFLAGS += -Rr > > $ make -f Makefile.pre -f Makefile > > > Should make(1) be patched to actually treat GNUMAKEFLAGS the same as > > MAKEFLAGS? > > > > Or maybe should the docs be fixed to say that GNUMAKEFLAGS doesn't > > have the special properties that MAKEFLAGS has? > > I think it will be difficult to change make to treat GNUMAKEFLAGS as > special inside a makefile. The entire handling of makefiles is a > hornets nest, and we are stung repeatedly every time we try to tweak it > to work differently. Makes sense. > > And, I'm not convinced such a thing is really useful. If you are > writing a makefile and you are relying on this always being set, it's > almost 100% guaranteed that your makefile won't work with any other > version o make anyway. Agree, and anyway, I'm using GNUmakefile for that reason. > > So I'm not sure I see the harm in having people write: > > MAKEFLAGS += -rR > > inside their makefiles, if that's the behavior they want. That's fine. Then please clarify the docs. :) I'll revert the use of GNUMAKEFLAGS in my project. Have a lovely day! Alex -- <https://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>
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