How to Use Variables

A variable is a name defined in a makefile to represent a string of text, called the variable’s value. These values are substituted by explicit request into targets, prerequisites, recipes, and other parts of the makefile. (In some other versions of make, variables are called macros.)

Variables and functions in all parts of a makefile are expanded when read, except for in recipes, the right-hand sides of variable definitions using ‘=’, and the bodies of variable definitions using the define directive.

Variables can represent lists of file names, options to pass to compilers, programs to run, directories to look in for source files, directories to write output in, or anything else you can imagine.

A variable name may be any sequence of characters not containing ‘:’, ‘#’, ‘=’, or whitespace. However, variable names containing characters other than letters, numbers, and underscores should be considered carefully, as in some shells they cannot be passed through the environment to a sub-make (see Communicating Variables to a Sub-make). Variable names beginning with ‘.’ and an uppercase letter may be given special meaning in future versions of make.

Variable names are case-sensitive. The names ‘foo’, ‘FOO’, and ‘Foo’ all refer to different variables.

It is traditional to use upper case letters in variable names, but we recommend using lower case letters for variable names that serve internal purposes in the makefile, and reserving upper case for parameters that control implicit rules or for parameters that the user should override with command options (see Overriding Variables).

A few variables have names that are a single punctuation character or just a few characters. These are the automatic variables, and they have particular specialized uses. See Automatic Variables.

• Reference		How to use the value of a variable.
• Flavors		Variables come in two flavors.
• Advanced		Advanced features for referencing a variable.
• Values		All the ways variables get their values.
• Setting		How to set a variable in the makefile.
• Appending		How to append more text to the old value of a variable.
• Override Directive		How to set a variable in the makefile even if the user has set it with a command argument.
• Multi-Line		An alternate way to set a variable to a multi-line string.
• Undefine Directive		How to undefine a variable so that it appears as if it was never set.
• Environment		Variable values can come from the environment.
• Target-specific		Variable values can be defined on a per-target basis.
• Pattern-specific		Target-specific variable values can be applied to a group of targets that match a pattern.
• Suppressing Inheritance		Suppress inheritance of variables.
• Special Variables		Variables with special meaning or behavior.