Re: Question on targets and goals

[Paul Smith]

On Mon, 2011-08-08 at 06:51 -0400, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
> I would like to invoke make with a debug or release configuration, but
> without a rule:
>     `make debug` or `make release`
> 
> Later:
> 
> ifeq ($(MAKECMDGOALS),debug)
>   CXXFLAGS += -DDEBUG=1 -g3 -ggdb -O0
> endif
> 
> Because I don't have a rule, I'm getting a make error:
>     make: *** No rule to make target `debug'.  Stop.

Why can't you add a rule?  Just say:

        debug release: all

In fact if you do this, you can take advantage of target-specific
variable inheritance, like this:

        debug release: all
        debug: CXXFLAGS += -DDEBUG=1 -g3 -ggdb -O0

which is exactly why inheritance was created in the first place.


If you can't add a rule and you can't use variable assignments
(regarding Greg's suggestion), then I think you're out of luck.  It
seems you want a new behavior without changing any code, which is seldom
possible in the world of computers :-)

-- 
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 Paul D. Smith <address@hidden>          Find some GNU make tips at:
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