Where does make's 'include' find files? - makefile

This seems (and probably is) obvious but I can't find it.
Where does make's include look for the file to include? Like this:
# /mydir/makefile
include basemakefile
where the file basemakefile is located somewhere else that I don't want to hard-code. Updating $PATH doesn't work for me.
EDIT: what I was really looking for was an environment variable to control this. There is no PATH, but as Etan suggests you can use MAKEFLAGS=-I/my/path/. Whether you should want to abuse MAKEFLAGS like that is questionable.

Etan's comment is the correct answer, for the edited version of the question. Do this in your environment
export MAKEFLAGS=-I/my/path
This is not abuse, it is a normal use of the variable MAKEFLAGS, covered in the GNU Make Manual.

From the very section of the manual you linked to:
If the specified name does not start with a slash, and the file is not found in the current directory, several other directories are searched. First, any directories you have specified with the ‘-I’ or ‘--include-dir’ option are searched (see Summary of Options). Then the following directories (if they exist) are searched, in this order: prefix/include (normally /usr/local/include) /usr/gnu/include, /usr/local/include, /usr/include.

Related

clang include multiple search path in the same directory

According to Clang doc:
-I < directory >
Add the specified directory to the search path for include files.
I wounder if there a way to add multiple search path on the same directory with one -I command, something like this:
-I"Dir1/SubDir/SubDir/SubDir/{IncludePath1,IncludePath2,IncludePath3}"
My project folder tree (unfortunately) is in a formation that there are 2 main folders for include paths which each one includes many paths for the -I option. This cause the clang command to be very long and i will give an example:
clang (...)
-I"Dir1/SubDir/SubDir/.../SubDir/IncludePath1"
-I"Dir1/SubDir/SubDir/.../SubDir/IncludePath2"
-I"Dir1/SubDir/SubDir/.../SubDir/IncludePath3"
-I"Dir1/SubDir/SubDir/.../SubDir/(And so on...)"
-I"Dir2/SubDir/SubDir/.../SubDir/IncludePath1"
-I"Dir2/SubDir/SubDir/.../SubDir/IncludePath2"
-I"Dir2/SubDir/SubDir/.../SubDir/IncludePath3"
-I"Dir2/SubDir/SubDir/.../SubDir/(And so on...)"
So again i wonder if there a way to tell clang to search with one command multiple search path or maybe make it search within a specific dir
Use options -isysroot and -iwithsysroot:
clang -isysroot"Dir1/SubDir/SubDir/SubDir/" -iwithsysroot"/IncludePath1/" \
-iwithsysroot"/IncludePath2/" -iwithsysroot"/IncludePath3/"
Unfortunately, this solution only works for one main folder and it also makes those include folders system ones, i.e., Clang won't show any warnings for them.
Also, -iwithsysroot is pretty long, so you may not save much typing there :)
But I'm not aware of any better way to do this directly via Clang options.
Although you could always write a shell script to ease the job...
Note. While digging through Clang command line reference trying to find a better solution, I came across option -ivfsoverlay that seems like it maybe could solve your problem.
I wasn't able to make it work, though, but I still decided to leave it here, maybe it'll be useful for you.

canonical way to use pkg-config variables in Makefile.am

A bunch of projects foo-A-B, foo-B-C, foo-A-C etc. each depend on foo-A, foo-B, foo-C etc.
Each of foo-X installs a pkg-config file (foo-X.pc.in) which contains a variable srcdir=#datarootdir#/foo/foo-B. A foo-X-Y project needs to refer to files in Xsrcdir and Ysrcdir.
Currently we do it like this in configure.ac:
PKG_CHECK_MODULES([foo_X], [foo-X])
AC_ARG_VAR(XSRC, "Source directory for foo-X")
AS_IF([test -z "$XSRC"], [XSRC=`pkg-config --variable=srcdir foo-X`])
(so Makefile.am gets to have rules like compile "$XSRC"/file.bar $#). This also lets developers override XSRC on running ./configure.
My question: is there a more canonical way to use non-standard pkg-config variables in autotools configury/makefiles? For e.g. libdir, I see pkg-config sets the variables itself so no configure.ac line is needed apart from PKG_CHECK_MODULES; are there other m4 macros we should be using?
I know this is fairly late, but since somebody was asking me about this recently, I thought it might be worth answering this too.
What you're looking for is PKG_CHECK_VAR, indeed most of that code can be replaced by a single line:
PKG_CHECK_VAR([XSRC], [foo-X], [srcdir], ,
AC_MSG_FAILURE([Unable to find value for XSRC]))
The error message is a bit less clear than the one triggered by PKG_CHECK_MODULES, but it also triggers in case the srcdir variable is not defined.
I wrote some more details as part of my Autotools Mythbuster.

Missing separator in Makefile

So here's the thing.
I'm trying to build pngwriter. In the makefile there's a line saying:
include make.include
The file make.include has the function to specify the platform used via a symlink, it has just one line:
make.include.linux
(there's a file in the same directory called make.include.linux which has some necessary settings. And by the way, I'm doing this on Windows with MinGW)
in the msys shell, when I do make, it says:
make.include:1: *** missing separator. Stop.
I've looked at other missing separator posts and they're about spaces/tabs, which I think it's not the case here. I've searched about makefiles, symlinks, separators and could solve it.
Please help!
EDIT! OK, so make.include.linux isn't a command, it's a file whose contents need to be included in the original makefile. The make.include should be, as I read, a symlink to make.include.linux.
What you have there isn't valid make syntax. Commands can only be run as part of a target recipe. In your case it seems like what you want is:
all:
make.include.linux
Assuming that make.include.linux is a command, and not something else. Make sure the indentation is a tab character.

understanding data assigned to macros in a makefile

I have searched through this forum but am not able to find an answer to this question, still if I have missed it please excuse me and direct me to the same.
I am trying to understand makefiles and came across the makefile for the tcpreplay utility on Linux. There are lot of macros that have been defined with the value starting an ending in a #. What are these values, how are they used? A snippet:
ACLOCAL = #ACLOCAL#
AMTAR = #AMTAR#
AR = #AR#
AUTOCONF = #AUTOCONF#
AUTOGEN = #AUTOGEN#
AUTOHEADER = #AUTOHEADER#
This is a makefile template, likely for software built with a GNU configure script. When configure is run, the #NAME# placeholders are replaced with proper values as determined at runtime. E.g. #AR# will be the name (or path) of the archiver, /usr/bin/ar. You then have a proper Makefile that you can run with a make invokation. If an actual Makefile still contains #NAME# placeholders, there was an error in running configure.
You are very likely not looking at a file named Makefile but one named Makefile.in. The .in suffix indicating that this is input to configure.
You can find all the gory details in the GNU autoconf manual.

variable=#value# in Makefiles

I understand that # suppresses printing of a command in a Makefile...
http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html#Echoing
... and I understand that $# is the target name...
http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html#Automatic-Variables
... but I can't find any information on what a line like this might mean:
variable=#value#
I'm not trying to fix anything here, just trying to better understand Makefiles.
Update: The "Makefile Subsitutions" section of the GNU autoconf manual explains that it's a value that is substituted by autoconf.
Typically you find this in Makefile.in files, which are processed by configure (which are in turn generated by autoconf) scripts.
In that case #X# will be replaced by the value of a shell variable $X, if configure is told so. If it's not, no occurrence in the input file will be touched by configure, hence leaving the replaceable string as it is. If you ask me these instances indicate slips in the build system.

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