Re: Conventions on build variables

[Sébastien Hinderer]

Dear Bob,

Many thanks for your response and sorry aobut the delay of mine.

Bob Friesenhahn (2019/08/08 08:05 -0500):
> On Thu, 8 Aug 2019, Sébastien Hinderer wrote:
>
> > Dear all,
> >
> > Are there some conventions about the properties a build system should
> > have regarding certain standard build variables?
> >
> > For instance, regarding variables such as CC or CFLAGS, when they are
> > passed to configure, should they be recorded somewhere so that a future
> > invocation of make takes them into account?
>
> Yes, they should normally be recorded in the Makefile so that they are used
> in the build.

Okay. Still, I guess if make is invoked with a different value of CC it
is then expected that this new value takes precedence over then one
stored in the Makefile, right?

Similarly, I kind of remember that if, say, make install is invoked with
a different value of PREFIX that value must be taken into acocunt and
that it is required that PREFIX can have different values during make
and make isntall. I am wondering whether there is a document which
specifies clearly for which variable this is expected to work that way
and couldn't find anything relevant on the web site of the FSF.

> If you use Automake in conjunction with Autoconf, this is
> done automatically.

Unfortunately, I don't.

> Otherwise you need to make sure that the necessary
> artifacts are in Makefile.in.

I don't mind taking care of this, I am just unsure at the moment about
what exactly is expected.

Thanks again for your help,

Sébastien.