Calling make from within a makefile - makefile

I have a Makefile which works perfectly called from a new shell, i.e.:
make -C /dir/
However, if I call this Makefile from another Makefile, it fails due to some complicated dependency issues. Make clearly has knowledge of the nested calls, evident by the print of make[1]: etc, and I suspect make is somehow sharing variables with its child process.
Is there anyway to call a clean make from within a Makefile? If my build works from a clean shell, it should be possible to call it from another Makefile without addressing the horrors inside the script! :)
Thanks!

make indeed shares some of its environment when it is recursively called. As suggested in https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/Options_002fRecursion.html#Options_002fRecursion, you might want to write your recursive call that way:
sub-make:
$(MAKE) -C /dir/ MAKEFLAGS=
and see if it helps. You can also control the variables that are exported to the sub-make by using export and unexport directives (https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/Variables_002fRecursion.html#Variables_002fRecursion)

It was a few environment variables in the caller make that broke the callee make (CFLAGS etc...)
My solution was to diff the environment at a clean shell and from the point of call. I then manually added the problem variables to a list and created some save_env/restore_env scripts.
Thanks!

Related

Changing the stack size and LD_LIBRARY_PATH using a Makefile

I would like to be able to have a rule inside my makefile that a changes the stack size and that appends to LD_LIBRARY_FILE the current directory.
In the shell I can just do:
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$(pwd)
ulimit -s SOME_NUMBER
Is there way to make a rule inside a makefile that is equivalent to running this two commands and will update the environment variables after the makefile is run?
You can link the executables with -z stack-size=VALUE or -rpath, which might have a similar effect.
You could push the command characters to the TTY layer and hope that the shell will execute them, but that is a bit nasty. The makefile could also compile a program which does the job using ptrace, but that would be very ugly as well.
No
A child process in bash cannot effect the environment of the calling shell (as #mpez pointed out). This is done on purpose to avoid some security holes. It's possible to export the commands to change the environment variable to a script, and run that script after you run make (which can be automated through another script), but make itself cannot effect the environment of the calling shell.

shellscripts in Makefiles do not work as expected

I found many answers here and elsewhere on the topic, but none that worked. Please help me out here.
I need to set some environment variables, which is partly done in some scripts, called from a master script, partly directly. Here is a minimal Makefile that shows the unwanted behaviour:
FC := ifort
SHELL := /bin/bash
some_target: load_ifort
$(FC) file.f
load_ifort:
source /usr/local2/bin/ifort-compilervars.sh ia32
export LM_LICENSE_FILE=/usr/local2/misc/intel2013/flexlm/server.lic
if I call make, I get an "ifort: command not found" error. If I execute the two comamnds by hand on the command line before calling make, ifort is found and everything is good.
What am I missing???
Each line in a recipe gets executed in a separate subshell. So you create one shell which sources the .sh file, then exits and forgets everything, then another shell which starts with a clean slate.
The straightforward solution in your case would be to collect all these commands in a single variable. I have factored out the LM_LICENSE_FILE assignment because that can be done in Make directly, but you could include that in the FC variable as well.
LM_LICENSE_FILE := /usr/local2/misc/intel2013/flexlm/server.lic
export LM_LICENSE_FILE
FC := source /usr/local2/bin/ifort-compilervars.sh ia32; \
ifort
some_target:
$(FC) file.f
If the shell commands can be straightforwardly run by Make as well, you could include them, or perhaps translate the sh file into Make commands by a simple script.
Another option would be to create a simple wrapper in your PATH; maybe call it fc:
#!/bin/sh
. /usr/local2/bin/ifort-compilervars.sh ia32
ifort "$#"
then just use fc where you currently have $(FC). (If the ifort-compilervars.sh file contains Bash constructs, in spite of the name, you should change the shebang to #!/bin/bash.)
As a rule, only one-liner shell commands "work". From the comment about "bash", it seems likely you are using GNU make. In your example, the word "source" is not found in the GNU make manual's index. (If you found this in a working example, it would be helpful to start from that). There are two types of variables of interest:
makefile variables, which live in the make program
environment variables, which are "exported"
The latter would include $PATH, which is used to find programs. For updating that, you do need shell commands. But (lacking some special provision in the make program), exported variables from a shell script are not passed up into the make program and made available for the next line of the makefile.
You could reorganize the makefile to provide a rule which combines the source command and other initialization into a shell command which then recurs (carrying those variables along) into a subprocess which would then do the compiles. Something like
build:
sh -c "source /usr/local2/bin/ifort-compilervars.sh ia32; \
export LM_LICENSE_FILE=/usr/local2/misc/intel2013/flexlm/server.lic; \
$(MAKE) some_target"
some_target: load_ifort
$(FC) file.f

Makefile that passes its command-line parameters to another script

In a project, I have a script called make.sh that builds the project and does some other stuff too. It is working well so far.
Then, just out of curiosity I've tried to create a Makefile that just passed its command-line parameters to this script so I could call it
make snapshot
instead of
./make.sh snapshot
this is the Makefile that I'm using right now
.PHONY: snapshot
%:
./make.sh $#
snapshot:
./make.sh snapshot
But this approach have some problems, I can't pass "build" as a parameter, because I have a "Build" directory (used by SCons), and I can't pass a second parameter to be passed to the script, like:
make upload 192.168.1.10
as make interprets it as two different targets...
Is there a way I can do this with the Makefile?
Yes, you can do it:
%:all
#true
all:
./make.sh $(MAKECMDGOALS)
but this is an abuse of Make. The idea is that Make should interpret its arguments as a set of targets, not an ordered list of general arguments. You should probably use a different tool.

Is there a configuration file for gnu make?

I want to tell make that it shall always use -j4 option even if I didn't specify it vie command line. Normally i would do this in some configuration file (i.e. ~/.makerc).
Does such file exist for gnu make?
Have a read about the $(MAKEFLAGS) variable:
export MAKEFLAGS=j4
However this will likely interfere with recursive-make-based builds (not that sensible people are using recursive make anyway!), by interfering with GNU make's ability to communicate with its sub-makes.
So the more sensible approach is probably a wrapper script or an alias or shell function.
Well, yes and no --- normally you would use an include file. Put your common configuration items together in a file, say common.mk and add
include common.mk
at the top of your makefile. If the flag doesn't have a matching way to configure it from inside the make file, you can use a function
function mk {
make -j4 $*
}
It doesn't exist, but you can do this by having a recursive call into make.
For example:
Makefile:
-include $(HOME)/.makerc
.DEFAULT_GOAL: all
# This will handle a default goal if make is just called without any target
all:
$(MAKE) $(MAKE_OPTIONS) -f Makefile.real $(MAKECMDGOALS)
# This handles all targets and passes it through
%:
$(MAKE) $(MAKE_OPTIONS) -f Makefile.real $(MAKECMDGOALS)
$(HOME)/.makerc:
MAKE_OPTIONS := -j4
I would like to expand a bit on the solution hinted in John Marshall's answer.
You can simply put a one-line wrapper script somewhere earlier in the $PATH with the following contents:
#!/bin/bash
$(type -ap make | sed -n 2p) -j4 "$#"
(The script doesn't have to be named make, and that would make it simpler, but I find it convenient if it is.)
I would argue that this is better than the other approaches for the following reasons:
Unlike MAKEFLAGS approach, it does not break recursive builds (which are actually quite common in my experience).
Unlike include .makerc approach, it can be applied locally without changing any existing makefiles or your workflow in any way.
Unlike shell alias or function approach, it is shell-agnostic (doesn't tie you to any particular shell) and works in any additional build scripts that you might have to use, too, as long as you launch them in the same environment.
I like the MAKEFLAGS approach suggested by John Marshall in lieu of make supporting something like an automatic .makerc project config file. However, I didn't want to have to remember to source a .env or similar environment variables beforehand (and unsetting them afterward).
A solution to this is to put the MAKEFLAGS assignment at the top of the Makefile itself:
#!/usr/bin/env make
MAKEFLAGS=s
.PHONY: foo
foo:
echo "hello, make"
Run it:
$ make foo
hello, make
Compared to running without the MAKEFLAGS=... line:
$ make foo
echo "hello, make"
hello, make

How to handle setting up environment in makefile?

So, to compile my executable, I need to have the library locations set up correctly. The problem is, the setup comes from a bunch of scripts that do the env variable exporting, and what needs to be set up may change (beyond my control) so I need to use those scripts instead of copying their functionality. To compile in regular command line, I need to do something like:
setup library1
setup library2
source some_other_setup_script.bash
g++ blah.c
# setup is a executable on my system that run some scripts
How would I write a makefile that accomplishes that? As far as I tried, the env variable exporting does not carry over (i.e. "export VAR=remember; echo $VAR" won't work)
You can also add environment variables properly with the machinery of GNU make, like so:
export TEST:="Something Good!"
test:
echo $$TEST
This (I think) has different semantics from:
TEST2:="Something not quite so useful?"
test2:
echo ${TEST2}
Which (again, I think) does the substitution within make before passing along to the shell. Note that the export command doesn't work within a target block, just unindented as an immediately executed command.
If variable exporting is not working the way it does on your command line, that suggests that Make is choosing a shell different from the one you're using, with different syntax for handling variables (export VAR=remember; echo $VAR works fine for me). Make uses /bin/sh by default, but you can override this with the SHELL variable, which Make does not import from the environment. I suggest setting SHELL (in the Makefile) to whatever you're using in your environment and trying the export VAR=remember experiment again.
Ultimately you will need to define the variable and execute the compiler in a shell list or even a script, rather than in separate make commands. There are a couple of refinements you could add, however. You could tell make about the script:
maintarget: script.sh blah.c
source script.sh; g++ blah.c
script.sh:
setup include script here
Another thing would be to just execute all that stuff in the same shell
maintarget: blah.c
run this; run that; run the other thing; g++ blah.c
I believe all make versions will run a ; list in the same shell, but you can always force a subshell with (list) or by calling specifically a shell script as a compiler command wrapper.
Don't forget to have the appropriate targets depend on your scripts themselves. BTW, some make versions (pmake aka bsd make) can execute a command when defining a make variable, and all versions of make then exports those. But I don't think gmake can do that.
You could write another shell script that executes all those commands, then prints out variable assignments that make can use. Run the script, pipe its output to a file, then include that file from your Makefile. For example:
Makefile:
all:
echo $(FOO)
test.mk: test.sh
./$< > $#
include test.mk
test.sh
echo "FOO=1"
Running "make" in the directory containing this Makefile produces:
make: Entering directory `/home/luser/build/mktest'
Makefile:7: test.mk: No such file or directory
./test.sh > test.mk
make: Leaving directory `/home/luser/build/mktest'
make: Entering directory `/home/luser/build/mktest'
echo 1
1
make: Leaving directory `/home/luser/build/mktest'
make creates test.mk by running the shell script, then includes it. test.mk contains the output of test.sh, and is parsed as a Makefile. See http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html#Include for more details.
We use a variant of this in Mozilla's client.mk to let you define options in a "mozconfig" file:
http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/client.mk#138
Restatement: How do I get a shell variable into a make file?
Something like:
MYVAR := $(shell echo $(MYVAR)) <any_makefile_additions_here>
So, this defines MYVAR inside a MAKEFILE when an environment variable named MYVAR is also set.
It might be of interest, that, in order to override an option that is already defined in a makefile, make supports (I am referring to GNU Make 3.82, but other version probably too) the option -e.
Example:
Makefile:
CC=gcc
...
Run make:
CC=gcc-4.7
make -e
will use gcc-4.7 instead of gcc.

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