Why does make lose variable settings when called recursively? - makefile

Question

I barely know enough makefile stuff to hack away at other people's makefiles, and sometimes not even that much. My current employer has a fairly sophisticated make environment, and I added a couple targets to the makefile, mostly to self-document all the switches I needed. (There might be a better way to do this...if there is, please let me know!!)
Anyway, the first target works as expected. The second target is identical to the first, except that the BENCH assignment has a "2" at the end. Otherwise, its the same exact call. At some point during execution, the BENCH variable gets used to create a directory. The first target creates the directory as expected. The second target creates the directory using the default BENCH name instead of the one passed to it. Somehow it lost the variable setting at the command line, even though almost identical syntax worked for the first target.
Why does it lose my variable settings when it calls itself? Is there some make subtlety that I'm missing? Is this even a valid thing to do?
comp_gate_oct04_ff:
make clean all BENCH=GATE_OCT04_FF SIMULATOR=NC SIM_64BIT=1 CORNER=FF NETLIST=oct04 | tee all_gate_oct04_ff.log
#tail all_gate_oct04_ff.log | mail -s "Compile for GATE_OCT04_FF is complete" $(SMS_ADDR) $(USER)
comp_gate_oct04_ff2:
make clean all BENCH=GATE_OCT04_FF2 SIMULATOR=NC SIM_64BIT=1 CORNER=FF NETLIST=oct04 | tee all_gate_oct04_ff2.log
#tail all_gate_oct04_ff2.log | mail -s "Compile for GATE_OCT04_FF2 is complete" $(SMS_ADDR) $(USER)

Answer 1

I can't see why you're getting this error, and I can't reproduce it. Try something simpler:
comp_gate_oct04_ff:
make foo BENCH=GATE_OCT04_FF
comp_gate_oct04_ff2:
make foo BENCH=GATE_OCT04_FF2
foo:
#echo BENCH is $(BENCH)
Tell us how this behaves and we'll go from there.
EDIT:
All right, we've cut the problem in half. Now try this:
comp_gate_oct04_ff:
make clean
make all BENCH=GATE_OCT04_FF SIMULATOR=NC SIM_64BIT=1 CORNER=FF NETLIST=oct04
comp_gate_oct04_ff2:
make clean
make all BENCH=GATE_OCT04_FF2 SIMULATOR=NC SIM_64BIT=1 CORNER=FF NETLIST=oct04