Re: GNU Make 4.3: Makefile rule spooky action at a distance

[Paul Smith]

On Mon, 2020-10-05 at 15:14 -0400, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
> > $ CFLAGS=ok make
> 
> I think you need to export CFLAGS. Or that is where I would look.
> CFLAGS is set in the first shell, but it is not inherited in child
> shells.

It should be: the value is set in the environment when make starts and
so it should be automatically marked for export to all child processes,
without needing to be explicitly exported.

It seems at first glance that somehow that setting is getting turned
off by the target-specific variable, even when we don't invoke it
through that target.

This definitely seems like a bug.  It would be interesting to know if
adding an explicit export solves the problem.  It would also be
interesting to know if this happens for all variables, even ones that
are not normally used by the default rules like CFLAGS.

I won't have time to look into this immediately however.