codeblocks-ep/help/html/programmerHelp/make/Overriding.html at master · maifeeulasad/codeblocks-ep · GitHub

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>GNU `make'</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html">
<meta name="description" content="GNU `make'">
<meta name="generator" content="makeinfo 4.3">
<link href="http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/" rel="generator-home">
</head>
<body>
<div class="node">
<p>
Node:<a name="Overriding">Overriding</a>,
Next:<a rel="next" accesskey="n" href="Testing.html#Testing">Testing</a>,
Previous:<a rel="previous" accesskey="p" href="Avoiding-Compilation.html#Avoiding%20Compilation">Avoiding Compilation</a>,
Up:<a rel="up" accesskey="u" href="Running.html#Running">Running</a>
<hr><br>
</div>

<h3 class="section">Overriding Variables</h3>

   <p>An argument that contains <code>=</code> specifies the value of a variable:
<code></code><var>v</var><code>=</code><var>x</var><code></code> sets the value of the variable <var>v</var> to <var>x</var>.
If you specify a value in this way, all ordinary assignments of the same
variable in the makefile are ignored; we say they have been
<dfn>overridden</dfn> by the command line argument.

   <p>The most common way to use this facility is to pass extra flags to
compilers.  For example, in a properly written makefile, the variable
<code>CFLAGS</code> is included in each command that runs the C compiler, so a
file <code>foo.c</code> would be compiled something like this:

<pre class="example">     cc -c $(CFLAGS) foo.c
     </pre>

   <p>Thus, whatever value you set for <code>CFLAGS</code> affects each compilation
that occurs.  The makefile probably specifies the usual value for
<code>CFLAGS</code>, like this:

<pre class="example">     CFLAGS=-g
     </pre>

   <p>Each time you run <code>make</code>, you can override this value if you
wish.  For example, if you say <code>make CFLAGS='-g -O'</code>, each C
compilation will be done with <code>cc -c -g -O</code>.  (This also
illustrates how you can use quoting in the shell to enclose spaces and
other special characters in the value of a variable when you override
it.)

   <p>The variable <code>CFLAGS</code> is only one of many standard variables that
exist just so that you can change them this way.  See <a href="Implicit-Variables.html#Implicit%20Variables">Variables Used by Implicit Rules</a>, for a complete list.

   <p>You can also program the makefile to look at additional variables of your
own, giving the user the ability to control other aspects of how the
makefile works by changing the variables.

   <p>When you override a variable with a command argument, you can define either
a recursively-expanded variable or a simply-expanded variable.  The
examples shown above make a recursively-expanded variable; to make a
simply-expanded variable, write <code>:=</code> instead of <code>=</code>.  But, unless
you want to include a variable reference or function call in the
<em>value</em> that you specify, it makes no difference which kind of
variable you create.

   <p>There is one way that the makefile can change a variable that you have
overridden.  This is to use the <code>override</code> directive, which is a line
that looks like this: <code>override </code><var>variable</var><code> = </code><var>value</var><code></code>
(see <a href="Override-Directive.html#Override%20Directive">The <code>override</code> Directive</a>).

   </body></html>